


His Voice

by bagog



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Character(s), Alien Culture, Angst, Flashbacks, Gay Male Character, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Parallel Narrative, Parallels, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:15:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 59,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagog/pseuds/bagog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two stories in parallel. After the war, Shepard finds himself isolated despite the constant care, love, and attention of Kaidan. Invited to a celebration honoring him on the Citadel, he is confronted with what it means to be a man alone--the man who saved the galaxy and broke the cycle of harvests forever.</p><p>In the distant past, the most famous Prothean general awakes on Ilos, ready to rebuild his empire, only to find that the world he has awakened to is as dead as the world he abandoned in his cryo-stasis pod.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2016 Mass Effect Big Bang!
> 
> Thanks to [Mia](bluekrishna101.tumblr.com) for the fantastic artwork! Drawn while I was still dramatically editing the story, her art basically kept me going, and it's been the background of my computer for a long time now! Thanks to everyone who supported this story on [my tumblr](bagog.tumblr.com).
> 
> Special thanks to ThreeWhiskeyLunch, JulesHawke, Mareel, Criz-Zone and Anonymouscatt for valiantly supplying names for the myriad Prothean character in this work, it was super fun to get creative types to name everyone!

** **

 

**Commander Shepard – After the Reaper War. Earth.**

Every morning began like this. Every morning would.

Kaidan gently shook him awake. The feeling made Shepard panic every time—the rocking of the Crucible tearing apart around him, exploding debris over a ravaged Earth replacing the dreams of strangled screams from husks and humans and turians. He’d never be able to summon the courage to ask Kaidan not to shake him…

Eating took almost 90 minutes: Kaidan made him feed himself. Shepard’s hands quaked, he still needed Kaidan to catch him when he stumbled. By the time he showered, he felt exhausted.

And then it was time for morning PT.

“Shepard?” Kaidan stood in the steam rolling out of the shower, the collar on his pressed linen shirt already going limp. Shepard had been sitting on his little bath stool under the hot stream for almost an hour, the bottles of shampoo and body wash untouched on the caddy. “Do you need some help?”

His voice was thick with concern, the sound of the man Shepard loved, and even though he couldn’t squint through the steam and see the look in his eyes, Shepard knew exactly what his face looked like. The dark circles under his eyes from sleepless nights spent caring for Shepard, preparing special meals, transporting him to PT. The post-war weight gain had only manifested on Kaidan’s face, his stubbled cheeks just a touch less angled than his service portrait hanging in the Hall of Heroes in the Earth embassy on the Citadel.

“I’m feeling a little down today, I think,” Shepard hated how own voice creaked when he spoke. He would tell himself silently that he has made stirring speeches, he would psyche himself up, and he would try to tell Kaidan ‘I love you,’ only for the words to come out as a thin shiver of the conviction he meant.

“Oh no,” Kaidan’s eyes were soft through the steam—so Shepard imagined—and his lover began to take off his shirt.

“No, stop. It’s fine,” he buried his face in his hands and Kaidan paused in the middle of removing his belt. “I can wash myself I just… needed to think.”

Kaidan stared for a moment, then fastened his belt again, stooped to pick up his shirt. He threw it over one shoulder and sank to the bathroom floor next to the shower. His hair was beginning to curl, one forelock swinging down onto his shining forehead.

“Alright, that’s fine.” His voice was calm and low underneath the spatter of droplets on the echoing tile, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Yes. Badly.

“I don’t think I have anything to say,” Shepard answered instead. “It’s the same old thing.”

He had never felt uncomfortable under Kaidan’s stare before—not on the Normandy when he stripped in front of him for the first time. Not when he had woken from his coma as skin and bones and failing cybernetics. But the more often Kaidan sat like this, staring into the shower and waiting patiently for the man he loved to tell him how to help, the more Shepard felt… not naked, exactly.

He felt as if there _was_ nothing to see. It was Kaidan’s patience that galled him. Shepard couldn’t be that wait. Couldn’t wait any longer.

“It doesn’t help for me to say ‘we’ll work through this together, you _will_ get better,’” Kaidan murmured. “But I’ll say it anyway.”

“It does help.”

It didn’t. It couldn’t.

“No,” Kaidan chuckled lightly, finger idly tracing a shape in the steam on the open shower door. “It doesn’t.”

His voice harbored no hurt, and that was almost insulting.

As the silence stretched on, the irregular splatters on the shower floor becoming a lulling drone, Kaidan closed his eyes and began to softly sing under his breath. He hadn’t asked if Shepard wanted him to stay or not—which was good. There was no way to answer that question. But he had never heard Kaidan sing. His voice hummed low and rumbled into the deep notes then mounted the higher passage with a tight throat.

Shepard’s hand shook when he picked up the bottle of soap, slicking the suds over his body while Kaidan sang and the shower ran. When he winced rinsing away the last of the soap, Kaidan opened his eyes, fell silent.

“It’s nothing,” Shepard suppressed his grimace. “I’m fine now, really. Just going to sit here for another minute is all.”

He turned off the water and let the water fall from his body, the steam rise from his skin.

“Alright, I’ll get your dinner started,” Kaidan groaned as he pulled himself up standing. “Oh, umm. You’ve been invited—well, _we’ve_ been invited—to a special commendation ceremony on the Citadel, it’s coming up here pretty soon. They’re hosting a big celebration for you. If you want to go.”

“We should go, definitely.”

Shepard didn’t want to go at all.

“Shh, you don’t have to decide now.” He reached through the shower door and rested a hand on Shepard’s wet shoulder. Then he was gone.

Shepard reached out, closed the shower door.

How did you go on after surviving what he had? He loved Kaidan more than anything, he fought every instinct to let Kaidan in, but more and more it seemed there was no place for Kaidan to go inside Shepard’s heart. He wasn’t a soldier anymore—he didn’t belong to a unit, he wasn’t connected to any force. He was hardly human anymore—when Shepard had medical problems, they were solved with code as often as medigel.

And now he was meant to come to a celebration on the Citadel, honoring him as a hero. His broken body and trampled spirit set him apart from Kaidan in way he couldn’t bridge, and as the Hero of the Citadel, he was as set apart from the rest of the galaxy as one could be and still be made of flesh and blood.

Connected to no one and without purpose: when he snapped the ‘cycle of harvests,’ Shepard snapped with it.

++

**General Rukosh – 49,000 years earlier. Ilos.**

The hum of the hydraulics, the quiet hiss of the hermetic seals, changed pitch all of a sudden. The Prothean had closed his eyes and stilled his breathing, focusing on the change in timbre, the slow descending tone as the seals isolated his pod from the outside world. Now the tone was ascending. The seals were decoupling.

It was the only indication that he’d been asleep for hundreds of years.

“General Rukosh,” a lilting voice sounded next to his head. “Your cryo-stasis cycle is complete. Are you well?”

The voice made him smile, despite everything. The too-slow cadence, the _pavak_ accent and the way the VI held its sibilants for just a little too long.

“I’m fine, Vigil,” Rukosh answered, but his voice came out as a croak, and he began to cough.

“It will take some time to adjust, your body has been inactive for some time.”

His extremities felt cold, and the air being pumped into the pod smelled musty. No matter how much he’d been warned, the sensation of sleeping away the centuries in the blink of an eye left his mind reeling. He wasn’t used to that.

“Have you woken Ksad?” He barely had enough room to shimmy his arm up his body in the pod, rubbing his left-most eye. His throat hurt so much, was so dry. “How is he? Not his first time in cryo, but he always gets so sick. Have you woken him yet?”

There was no reply from the VI.

“Vigil?”

“My primary task is attending to you, at this moment, General,” the placid voice replied.

“If he throws up, I want to make sure I am there to help him clean things up before one of his staff sees him.” There may have been light shining through the top of the pod, and Rukosh could barely see radiation of any kind. “I am fine, let me out.”

“It is advisable to allow a ten minute period of adjustment before leaving the stasis pod. Stasis shock can occur if the subject exits too quickly.”

Rukosh was going to argue, but already a wave of exhaustion was washing over him: his body realizing he was awake. More than that, his body realizing he had been asleep at all. He could practically still taste the rations he had eaten before entering the pod. The feel of Ksad’s kiss practically still hummed against his lips, bent over the General’s pod, looking both ways to ensure that none of his staff—or Rukosh’s, for that matter—were looking.

It was a moment ago.

It was centuries ago.

He’d fallen asleep as the galaxy crumbled to ashes under the Reapers’ invasion, and now he was awake. That could only mean the Reapers were gone. The work ahead of the Ilos team was monumental. Seconds ago, there had been a Prothean empire, and now, there was nothing. Rukosh had abandoned his people. But not if what Ksad said was true, they were the only hope for the Prothean people, for the races who would come after and need their guidance.

“Is he waking up?” Rukosh whispered, his head had begun to throb. The memory-sensation of the pod had virtually disappeared, no sense of the hundreds of people who had designed and handled these pods. No sign of Ksad’s trepidation in the alloy anymore, or his mingled relief in seeing his mate safely put in cryo-sleep before the facility went dark. It was the surest sign that the years had passed. “Patch me through to his pod. I want to be the first voice he hears when he wakes. He is going to have enough of these idiots yammering at him before long. I want to make sure he is well rested.”

“Many systems are down, General.” The voice was calm, the tone used to amuse Rukosh back when Ksad first brought it online. Then it annoyed him. He was bothered that it was strangely comforting now, and wanted more than ever to be the first voice Ksad heard in the darkness of his stasis pod. “A significant number of systems have been shut down in order to maintain the mission.”

Rukosh opened his eyes.

“Why have we lost power, Vigil?” Ksad had approved the calculations himself, and explained them to Rukosh: the facility had adequate power to wait out the Reaper extermination. Was there an attack? Had the Reapers found them while they slept? He practically kicked against the inside of the stasis pod, trying to shake his limbs free of the prickling sensation devouring them.

“The facility had power reserves for 400 years,” Vigil said simply, “It has been 967 years since this facility went dark.”

“…Let me out, machine. _Now._ ”

The pod shuddered and pushed out of its alcove, a dim light streaming through the canopy. There was barely any electromagnetic radiation in the air—normally the Ilos facility was blinding with all the signals and readouts.

The canopy of his pod opened, he hauled himself up with a grip on the side. His head pounded, and when he looked over the edge of the pod, he realized he was ten stories above the floor of one of the great tunnels leading down into the heart of the mountain. His head reeled with the sensation.

“The pod-transport crane is no longer operational. I am sending a tram to retrieve you.”

The great halls of the inusannon were lit only dimly by the natural skylights, the ruins that burrowed into the mountain and out the other side, were practically a stream. Water ran through the wide hall, dripped down from the ceiling. Vegetation clung to everything, creeping vines slowly growing towards the dim glow of light from the center chamber far away. It clung to the pods, both open and closed…

Strange, no other pods in this section should be open. As head of security, Rukosh should have been the first in this part of the facility revived. Still more of the pods no longer showed monitoring lights of any kind, and there was a sinking feeling in the pit of the General’s stomach.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rukosh discovers what has happened since he's been asleep. Shepard and Kaidan on approach to the Citadel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can put notes on Prothean culture as they function in this fic, if anyone finds it confusing in the text itself. Let me know!

**General Rukosh**

All eyes turned to Rukosh when he stepped out of the elevator into the central chamber. There were only a handful of Prothean researchers clustered around the Vigil interface, and they didn’t look nearly as sick as Rukosh felt.

He realized in an instant that they’d all been awakened days before he had, despite security protocols.

The chamber no longer rang with the imprints of the researchers who had been preparing the stasis pods when Rukosh had last set foot in here. The centuries had scrubbed away their panic, the rush of discovery, even the red burn the younger scientists had called ‘hope,’ but Rukosh knew as defiant Prothean imperialism. Now, the chemical scents of fear and grief were stronger even than the imprints the awakened scientists gave off.

On the tram ride from his pod to the chamber, he had seen the pods that had been shut down: dozens. Hundreds. Had so few remained? This miserable company huddled around their VI like an idol, were they all that were left?

Vigil itself was a twisted pillar of static, unable to form itself into the prothean form it had been designed to resemble. Its unstable light flickered in the dimness. Rukosh could feel the way the dozen researchers tensed in his presence, the quickening of fear in their blood.

“Where is Ksad?” His voice echoed in the vaulted chamber. Suddenly, it was as if none of them could meet his eyes. Rukosh summoned his training, despite the pounding in his chest: size up the scene. He hadn’t been privy to the mission-essential hierarchy when he had been put under.

He recognized Prakvar at once, the brace keeping his back ramrod straight despite the old injury that threatened to bow him. Head of the Relay Conduit division. Several junior members of his division huddled behind him like children hiding from an angry dog. Korma, the Ilos facility archivist, stood closest to the VI, practically swathed in its light. Just as close, as if huddling around the VI like a living flame, was Jinspar, the head of exo-biology.

The archivist? The biologist? And yet, where was Ksad? He was the head of the facility. He should be top priority for preservation in the event of a power-loss.

“Where _is_ he?” Rukosh demanded. The four Juniors practically shivered. He was accustomed to the way the erudite researchers winced away from a _jutan_ accent—his accent—when they’d been away from it. Most had likely never been outside the core of the Empire to hear a fringe accent before coming to Ilos, and then only from the security detail.

“He’s gone, General,” Prakvar said, rough voice straining his eloquent _pavak_ accent.

“There was a problem with the stasis pod.” Rukosh stated it as fact, limbs frozen in place. There must have been a problem.

Vigil’s static form twisted in on itself.

“The Doctor’s—“

“ _You_ do not speak,” the general seethed, losing the smallest modicum of control over the psychosympathetic imprints his aura was projecting. Several of the others shuddered when Rukosh’s emotion washed over them.

“I am sorry, General,” Korma, the archivist, rubbed his brow. He could not bear to look at Rukosh as he spoke. “Doctor Ksad’s pod was deactivated in accordance with the contingency power-saving measures. We are all that is left of this facility. All that is left of our people—“

“’Our people’ are not at issue here,” Rukosh had capped his emotions. He hoped the chill of his control would intimidate the scientists more than the raw agony he was feeling. “Wasn’t Ksad’s pod deemed essential in any contingency?”

“General Rukosh—“

“ _Silence_ the machine!” His roar echoed off the walls, and Vigil was quiet.

“We are all that remain.” Korma turned at last, a deep weariness in his eyes.

The air was thick with the musty scent of centuries and the quake of emotions that threatened to bubble over. Rukosh himself was so near to rage he could hardly feel the others in the room.

“So, the machine has killed him,” he concluded, a hollow accusation.

“It’s _saved_ us,” Jinspar said softly, braving a step up the gangway to the general. “And perhaps it has saved our people. Everything Doctor Ksad worked for—“

He stopped when Prakvar held up a hand, shook his head.

“How long?” Rukosh’s voice cracked.

“Decades,” Prakvar sighed. “Vigil… is not permitted by his programming to tell us in which order pods were shut down, but. Doctor Ksad has been dead for years. We already checked. No one can be revived.”

“You checked every pod,” the General sneered.

“No,” Prakvar admitted, “Only…”

“Only the ‘important’ ones.’” Rukosh turned on his heel and stalked back to the elevator, legs shaking beneath him.

“General, please! We need to—“ but Rukosh never heard what Jinspar thought he ‘needed’ to do. The elevator door slammed closed, and the lift ground its way back to the dismal tunnels.

The ancient ruins of the inusannon, now a mass grave of his people.

Killed not by war, not by the Reapers. But by poor planning.

His people.

His love.

He made it three steps out of the lift before falling to his knees in the water that ran through the hall like a captive river, and his rage echoed through the mountain. Such a display would leave a psychosympathetic imprint obvious as a pool of bile vomited on the floor, but he could no longer control himself.

An hour ago, Ksad had wished him ‘goodnight,’ and they would both sleep through the end of civilization together.

And now Ksad was gone. Civilization be damned.

**Commander Shepard**

When Shepard used to think of the Citadel, he used to think of walking for kilometers and kilometers from one interview to another. Another club, another shop, another journalist coming upon him on coincidence who also just happened to have a pointed roster of questions for him.

These days, he thought about the Ward arms swinging open—kite ribbons tossed apart in the wind. He thought about the Crucible firing and the Citadel crumbling into flames.

He gripped Kaidan’s hand tighter.

Kaidan wasn’t content with only that, though, and unlaced their fingers. He put an arm around Shepard’s shoulders and pulled him in. There, his cheek pressed to Kaidan’s chest and a hand softly stroking his hair, the view of the Citadel outside the shuttle window wasn’t so bad.

It glimmered a dazzling blue in the reflected light of the Earth below.

“Y’know,” Kaidan chuckled, and Shepard felt the soft rumble of his voice, “A part of me always felt like the Citadel was actually pink.”

“Pink?” Shepard smiled, nudged Kaidan until the other man scooched against the wall and could recline more. Shepard brought his feet up on the seat, and let himself lay more fully against his lover’s chest.

“Yeah, pink. Hey! Don’t laugh! I mean, not _flamingo_ pink or anything. Just. A nice pastel, maybe?”

“Pastel pink, huh?” He’d never approached from broad-side before, approaching in a shuttle at orbital speeds made it seem even more colossal than he already knew it to be. It gave a sickly feeling of vertigo, always expecting to be just-arriving, only to realize the station was still growing and growing and growing—

“I mean,” Kaidan nudged him just a little when he seized up, “It was the nebula, I get that, right? Made everything look all kinda dusky. Pink. But I used to think: wouldn’t it be cool if it was some special Prothean alloy?” The laughter started deep in his stomach until it bubbled up, “And the Protheans just had this _thing_ for pink, right? That they just _loved_ pastel pinks and blues.”

Now the Citadel looked like a flight of crystal airs, hung frozen above his home world. And these days they knew the Protheans hadn’t built the station at all. But he closed his eyes and laughed anyway, imagined the whole monstrosity done up in thick candy-cane bands of blue and lavender and pink.

Kaidan laughed when he shared the vision.

“If they actually marketed a bubble flavored novelty Citadel…” Kaidan kissed his forehead, “I’d wait in _line_ for that!”

“Wouldn’t have to, Spectre authority.”

When he opened his eyes minutes later, they were close enough to see the repairs being conducted: the outer façade almost entirely restored. The wards themselves were still a few more years away from being fully prepared—some areas still uninhabitable. Open to space. Empty, cold. Whole streets still tattered, burned metal from where the power distribution system overloaded under skyscrapers and apartments and schools… every other street a graveyard—

“Hey,” Kaidan squeezed him, pointed out the window. “Name the wards on sight.”

Shepard leaned his head off Kaidan’s chest.

“Where’s the tower?” he mumbled.

“Hey! No fair!” Kaidan grinned, “Besides you can’t see it from this angle.”

“I think…” he pointed high, “Bachjret?”

“What? No way! That’s Kithoi Ward!”

“No! Look: that little circle of streets down there? That’s definitely the Bachjret Stadium. And that one’s Tayseri…”

“It _that’s_ Bachjret, there’s no way _that’s_ Tayseri! They’re not even next to each other.”

“Yes they are,” Shepard screwed up his face, “Aren’t they?”

“…Are they?”

Once they pitched starboard and could see the Citadel tower to orient which ward was which in relation, they were practically kicking themselves at the mistakes they made.

Kaidan had said it once—and then never again—how amazing it was that the Citadel tower had remained at all, being the center of the Crucible explosion. Watching Kaidan look at the tower now, Shepard knew he was thinking the same thing, but his perceptive boyfriend wouldn’t repeat the thought aloud after the way it made Shepard panic last time. _That_ had almost been his own grave. More and more he thought it should have been, that he had earned that end and should be up on some memorial wall with the residents of the Aroch district on Shalto War, or the Gloven district on Kithoi—

But then Kaidan pointed his finger out the window to where one the giant asari construction tankers was lowering a new panel into the border of Zakera ward. Kaidan’s little game had gotten him thinking about that tower. It was amazing how something so small could orient Shepard, like a compass arrow, and Shepard had to follow where it pointed. He had to try.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rukosh finds a way to carry on with his duties, somehow. Shepard sits in Apollo's and considers that he no longer has any duties.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I am so sorry this has been slow to upload, AO3 has never treated me this way)

**General Rukosh**

“General.” Shalteen looked up from the schematics she had spread out across the table. The crumbs of the protein bar she was eating were scattered across the data-pads. Rukosh remembered Doctor Shalteen as one of the foremost researchers in the Conduit program. “Welcome. Jinspar was just about to insist on looking for you. Now maybe he can just talk _to_ you instead of about you. Constantly.”

When he found the mess hall deserted, Rukosh had come directly into the kitchen. The vault here had rations enough for a population of hundreds for a decade. Instead, five scientists were reading through graphs and reports on counters and tabletops, ensconced by empty ration packages.

“Would you like something to eat, General? You must be famished…” Jinspar’s aura was tinged with the dullest hint of embarrassment, but he was holding back none of his excitement.

“You are not following the rationing protocol,” Rukosh replied to Shalteen. Jinspar sheepishly looked at his own protein bar.

“If we glutted ourselves, we could not eat everything in this vault before we die of old age.” Shalteen shrugged. “Grieving on an empty stomach is for poets. I have work to do.”

“So grief is now dictating policy at this facility,” Rukosh droned, he didn’t meet Shalteen’s eye and she returned the favor. “Pity.”

“We _all_ lost friends, General.” The old Doctor Prakvar wouldn’t look at him, but Rukosh noticed he had stopped scrolling through his report. “But some of us still have business _despite_ our setbacks. For the Empire.”

“There is no more Empire,” Rukosh responded. Kitchens always had a psychic aura that was equal parts industry and calm, a soft yellow glow. Really, only Ksad had ever agreed with him on this. Dull as that soothing glow had been in the Ilos facility’s huge kitchens, it was gone with the years, now. The cloying sting of addled panic-work and grief clung to the counters.

“We are the Empire,” Prakvar said, more to the younger scientists than to Rukosh: surely he could feel the sinking feeling in the room at Rukosh’s words too. “We ruled the galaxy. As long as a single Prothean lives, we still rule it.”

“An empty kingdom.” Rukosh picked up a crumpled wrapper that had fallen to the floor, “That is no kingdom.”

“Our people are strong, intelligent. I do not believe we are the only of our kind left.” Again, Prakvar spoke to the others, not sparing a glance at Rukosh.

“Doctor, General,” Jinspar held up a hand, smiled to placate. While the others had multiple data-pads spread in front of them, the exo-biologist had only one. “We can’t afford any more time to… dwell on our losses.” He shook his head, crunched into a new protein bar, gagging at the taste. The scientists had never had to eat military rations.

“We’ve been awake longer than he has,” Rhavka muttered with a mouth full of protein. The signal program specialist was sitting on the floor, braced against a cabinet. “He needs time to adjust, soldier or no. We did.”

“Oh no, please. By all means, a rousing little bicker is _exactly_ the spice I needed to gag down these protein bars.” Shalteen pushed her work aside and leaned her elbows on the countertop, the sarcasm blistering at the edges of her aura.

“Enough,” Prakvar barked. He cleared his throat, turned to Rukosh, “General, whatever our differences in ideology, I am sure we share the same goal.”

“I am not sure of that.” He could feel the rising anger within Prakvar, and the way the old scientist’s face paled, the energy was almost palpable.

“Surely, if not for the sake of our team’s _morale_ ,” Prakvar said through grit teeth. “You at least _attempt_ to establish a goal which will service our cause.”

The other scientists were unabashedly staring at the elder protheans now, data-pads and protein bars abandoned. Not one dared to speak, their energy output dropping so as not to interfere with the contest at play in the room.

“I am appraising the situation,” Rukosh answered. The hobbled researcher’s anger and his accusations didn’t faze him, nor did they interest him. Instead, because he knew it galled Prakvar, he drenched every syllable in his native _jutan_. “We are in no immediate danger, our objective—whatever that might be—is not constrained by time. Observation, assessment. These are my priorities.”

Sure enough, Prakvar had to lean in to make sure he could understand Rukosh’s thick accent.

“This is not a _military,_ General Rukosh!” he spat, “and we are _not_ your troops!”

“Then why am I responsible for your morale?” Rukosh idly brushed a few crumbs from the countertop. Prakvar balked.

“I-in order to… we all must… we are a _community_ and for the empire we must—”

“You said that the two of us share a common goal, _scientist_ ,” Rukosh put only the mildest color of the scorn which Prakvar added to the word ‘General’ whenever he spoke the word ‘scientist.’ “I do not have a goal. I will not until I know the situation.”

Prakvar slowed his breathing, though Rukosh could feel the desire to snap back at him. The general was impressed: though his own ability to dampen his pyschosympathetic aura was the subject of much envy among his troops, he seldom saw other Protheans exhibit as much control as Prakvar was now exercising.

He wondered if it was to save face before the others or not.

“…this isn’t Atar Piza’ato either, General Rukosh,” he said at last.

“No. It isn’t.”

The tension between them was practically comfortable, and that thought shook Rukosh. It was the same razor wire tension of his capital ship before a battle. The very feeling he had told Ksad—how many times?—that he was so weary of. As if the blood that had been scrubbed from the deck-plates after a hundred battles had begun to smell again, rising up to call for more blood. The way the stars shone between the formations of the enemy fleet, like a million eyes that turned about the center of the galaxy only to wait for some new species to rise and war and die for their cold amusement.

It wasn’t bloodlust, it wasn’t merely adrenaline. It was the elastic cord coiled inside every warrior that would always pull him back to battle, pulling tight now to ensure he could not run anywhere but headlong into the enemy. It was a sickening feeling, Rukosh hated it. Yet, only Ksad had ever calmed it in him, and the feeling had nearly been erased from his heart since he came with his mate to Ilos.

That the feeling had returned, and that now it comforted him and filled him with fear. Now Ksad was gone. What other comfort was there? None he wanted, if this was all that was left to him. Not if this old man could stir a battle-tension in him.

“Not to interrupt,” Shalteen’s cynical voice broke Rukosh’s reverie. “But I was slaving over my calculations during most of the early campaigns. What is Atar Piza’ato? I am assuming it was some great failure of your career, General Rukosh? Perhaps the ‘disgrace that haunts you to this day’ or something like that?”

Rukosh practically laughed, the conduit specialist had no time for the posturing. He wondered for a moment if Ksad had chosen her for this disillusioned humor as much for her skill with the intricacies of mass effect conduits.

“Oh no,” Jinspar said breathlessly. “Atar Piza’ato was a great victory for the Prothean military, early in the war!”

“Isn’t that system in the Bekjitar Horizon?” Rhavka asked, voice a little quieter than the others. Letting everyone know she was still there.

“A victory,” Prakvar sneered, not looking away. “For whom? The _kilb’at_?”

“These are wonderful little teases,” Shalteen sighed, “But maybe someone can just tell me the damn story so I can at least decide which of these two is ‘winning’ the argument, if I cannot get on with my work, that is.”

“No one is stopping you from leaving, Shalteen,” Rhavka piped up. Shalteen merely gave her a wink.

“At Atar Piza’ato, the general engaged the Reapers in a surprise attack,” Jinspar began, though he still gawked at Rukosh. “It’s the only time through the whole war—well, the parts before we were in cryo, of course—that anyone had ever managed to surprise them! The Reapers had glassed two of the major manufacturing worlds in the system, and were preparing to deploy ground troops to take the outer colony worlds.” His excitement was building, a hazy yellow aura that blended strangely with the tension between Prakvar and Rukosh. “General Rukosh had used his fleet to lower the mass of one of the colony’s ice moons, then towed it within its tidal boundary. The gravity wake created a sensor dead-zone!”

“Oh… OH!” Rhavka exclaimed, “I _did_ hear about this, I was right! That’s the battle where the Yumaijo was lost! It had that drive core Professor Minitaje was always going on about in Dynamics…”

“My capital ship,” Rukosh said softly. “Though I was aboard the Kevelik to lead the assault.”

“Over the next 15 hours, the fleet decimated the Reaper invaders! The entire system was saved.” Jinspar nodded his head firmly, beaming at Rukosh. His need for approval was so thick in the air, Rukosh wondered how he was not embarrassed.

“Well, looks like I could not have been wrong,” Shalteen chuckled. “But if you were fighting in the Bekjitar Horizon… that would make you a part of the Ascension Fleet?”

She said it as if it were nothing, but the mere mention of the word made Prakvar’s aura prickle.

“Ascension Fleet?” Rhavka asked. She was young, younger even than wide-eyed Jinspar, though she had the poise of one more experienced than her years. By the time she was old enough to pay attention to the war, the Ascension Fleet had been re-integrated.

“They are as old as the empire,” Shalteen folded her arms, punched out a few figures on a nearby data-pad. “Was the division of the fleet established to serve in tribute systems.”

“To maintain order along the frontiers,” Prakvar seethed.

Except there were no frontiers. The Protheans controlled the whole galaxy, and every race in it. Though every race they ruled eventually “joined” the empire, they were known as ‘protheans,’ not ‘Protheans’. The irony was that only the different shade of psychic meaning a biological Prothean put on the word could distinguish it from its lesser. The tribute protheans were members of the Empire. Included, but not quite. All one culture, but not quite.

“Well, originally, maybe!” Jinspar clearly didn’t recognize the challenge in Prakvar’s words, and babbled right on. “At first they were to prevent against uprising and to help train newly joined systems in Prothean tactics. But then, they stayed to serve as the Prothean pledge to the defend member systems.”

“Because their own military was conscripted to serve in the core of the Empire,” Rukosh added, bitterly. Local military forces defending their own home could one day form a new resistance. Best to disperse them beneath Prothean commanders defending the core of the empire they’d pledged themselves to.

Shalteen made a conclusive hum in the back of her throat.

“If you were a general of the Ascension Fleet, that would be why I had not heard of you,” she remarked. Then when she felt the inquisitiveness coming off Rhavka, she added: “Not the most prestigious position.”

“The story of Atar Piza-A’ato was always told _to me_ as a great victory,” Jinspar shrugged. “ _And_ a turning point in the war—the first recorded instances of indoctrination. But… I remember a lot of people being very upset about it…”

“General Rukosh’s battle at Atar Piza’ato cost his fleet a substantial number of ships,” Prakvar fumed. “It greatly weakened the Alachon Line in future campaigns against the Reapers.” So, the old doctor was one of those Alachon apologists. The Alachon Line was the portion of the Ascension Fleet meant to collapse back to reinforce the core if needed. Fleets were still autonomous, but it was generally considered that no fleet in the Line should engage in any conflict which would threaten their numbers, just in case they were needed for a threat against the core.

“…uh huh,” Shalteen narrowed her eyes, but kept her aura neutral. “Well, anyway, General, that explains why I hadn’t heard of you. I knew Doctor Ksad had the pull and the brains to get a qualified person for planetary defense, and was not so soft as to just… give the position to his lover.” When Rukosh turned his head to her, she added quickly, “No offense, of course. Bonus for him, really. Knew what he was doing. Man was smart, is what I am saying.”

“You _should_ have heard of him! General Rukosh was named an Avatar of the Empire!” Jinspar exclaimed.

“I never pay attention to those things,” Shalteen dismissed his enthusiasm with a dousing gray psychic splash. “Alright, I am just completely ignorant about the military, satisfied? My way of glorifying the empire was in VI simulations. And no one becomes an Avatar that way!”

“You are grieving, General,” Prakvar said at last, his breathing and his aura steady, but his eyes fixed on Rukosh, as if he were the only one in the room. “You believe there is some third option, or that we have time to observe. You were estranged from the true force of the Empire once, but now we all _are_ the empire. And we _must_ work together. We can afford no needless losses, this time.”

“This is not Atar Piza A’ato, Doctor Prakvar,” Rukosh said softly, letting the challenge of the doctor’s aura peck at the edges of his own boundary. “Because there is no one to protect. There is no enemy. There is no war. There is no empire. There are no soldiers. And I have nothing to lose. This is nothing but a refugee camp. We will my immigrants and hermits, living in the wild. Our time has passed with each of the stasis pods the machine turned off. Soldiers need morale. Refugees must first have truth.”

Prakvar did not respond, and the room was quiet except for the sound of Shalteen crunching into a new protein bar.

“You will find the updated list of which of the facilities’ areas are shut down has been sent to your terminal,” Rukosh said to the room, a moment later. “Pay close attention to security updates.”

He turned and left, easy pace hounded by Prakvar’s aura. Walking from the tug of that battle-tension was practically painful, but he welcomed the pain more than he had welcomed the fight. And his aura showed none of it, he made sure of that.

 

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

Sanity check.

The first time Kaidan and Shepard had come to Apollo’s together, Shepard had been wearing the weight of the war around his neck like a cloak, or a hero’s cape. It disguised his insecurities and it gave him the posture he desperately needed to attract warring peoples to his cause. He and Kaidan had come to Apollo’s again, and this time, Shepard wore mechanical fittings on his legs just to be able to walk about the Presidium with ease.

“Can’t believe this place is still here,” Kaidan’s eyes were shining over the rim of his glass of whiskey. “Can’t believe they’re still serving steak.”

“Repair crews gotta eat, huh?” Shepard tried to smile. The awkward walk from the Alliance docks down to the Presidium in his braces had made him _feel_ the size of the Citadel, but also the strength of Kaidan’s arms around which caught him if he stumbled, the length of Kaidan’s patience keeping slow step with Shepard.

It shouldn’t, but it filled Shepard with guilt. This slow, stumbling procession didn’t embarrass him—nobody here recognized him, not this hobbling, scarred mess. He wasn’t filled with grateful love at the way Kaidan caught him—and he _should_ be. This was what life had become. It was that simple.

“How’re your legs doing?” Kaidan asked when Shepard’s attention started to wander down to the crushed and burnt-out buildings further down the Presidium.

“They feel sluggish.”

“The neural link might not be calibrated where it should be, low-gravity environment like this. Doc says it can interfere.” He opened his omni-tool and began reviewing a schematic of Shepard’s leg-braces.

Kaidan did all the interfacing with the doctors, physical therapists, dieticians… The long lists of requirements and daily exercises and caveats and things-to-watch-out-for made Shepard queasy. One doctor joked _“Commander Shepard, as your doctor I’m_ ordering _you to check for blood clots every morning!”_ And laughed. But Kaidan took it all and committed it to memory, and there was no one else Shepard would have trusted: and when Kaidan told him to do this or that exercise, Shepard just would. It should have made him grateful to his lover, should have turned him back into that starry-eyed romantic he’d been the first night he kissed Kaidan on the mouth, the taste of whiskey and a sweaty upper-lip.

“Hey,” Shepard said softly, reaching across the table. “You don’t have to do that right now. We were going to make a vacation out of this trip, remember? Let’s find you some hobbies so you can take your mind off taking care of me all the time, huh?”

“Are you kidding,” Kaidan turned his hand over, clasping Shepard’s and squeezing gently. “A little tech-puzzle’s exactly what I need to relax.”

“Well. Maybe I can keep up with you a bit better,” Shepard tried to scoot his chair around the table to more easily hold Kaidan’s hand, but Kaidan moved his chair instead.

“A nice stroll is exactly what you need,” he laid a kiss on Shepard’s knuckles. “Slow and steady. See the sights. Relive some old memories.”

“Yeah, I guess I could use the sanity check…”

“The what?”

“The… uhh. The ‘sanity check.’ You said that the first time we met here together.”

“Oh. I don’t remember that.”

“I could be remembering wrong.”

Except he wasn’t.

“No,” Kaidan laughed, “I don’t think you are. I was so… nervous. I remember saying,” he bit his lip, squinted one eye as if he’d squeeze the thought out his ear. “’I wanna have something deeper with someone I care about, you and me make sense.’”

“Yeah, it was something like that,” Shepard squeezed Kaidan’s hand. Something deeper. That was what Kaidan had wanted, and it was easy to believe then—hopelessly in love—that that’s what he wanted to. Was it a ‘deeper’ relationship to care for your lover night and day like Kaidan had had to do? Or to rely on your lover like Shepard had to do.

It wasn’t about the medical issues or the leg braces—Shepard needed every bit of help he had and he didn’t grudge it for a moment. But he was missionless, and he had become Kaidan’s mission. The gulf between them didn’t close when their palms clasped together. The fact that Kaidan seemed not to notice, seemed _always_ to be ready to help, convinced Shepard all the more.

Shepard had nothing to connect him to these doctors but Kaidan, and no way to connect to his own body except Kaidan. He was a mission. He was a puzzle to which there was, maybe, no solution.

 

**++**

 

**General Rukosh**

They thought he had spent the days moping, wishing for death. Mourning. That was fine. Duty didn’t require approving eyes or gratitude. He was General Rukosh Ishan, the last surviving vestige of the military might of the Prothean Empire, and he was ‘security’ at the Ilos research facility. The guard of a mausoleum.

Still, that was his duty. And he was the _only_ guardian.

And it was Ksad’s mausoleum.

So he secured the entire facility, from one side of the mountain to the other. All the ancient corridors, all the Prothean structures incorporated with the old—the elegant rooms that had been added when the structure had first been unearthed at the height of the Empire, the haphazard bits that had been cobbled together when the staffing of the facility quadrupled after the Reaper invasion. The work of his entire security detail took days to perform by himself.

He would keep the scientists safe, it was still his charge. The reason Ksad had trusted only him to head the defense of the planet. And the scientists thought he had been moping up and down the silent corridors. His little fight with Prakvar in the mess the other day had become somewhat a topic of conversation among the scientists—likely by Prakvar’s own encouragement—and very soon the language of the small company was full of comparisons: you were either grieving _or_ working. And work was _correct._ Grieving was _not_ correct.

But Rukosh noticed enough of them consulting his updating list of secure corridors searching for remote places where no one would be likely to go. In the shadows, he had come upon enough of them, when they thought they were alone, allowing their grief to bow their heads and close their eyes; then he would move along without being seen. The walls in the more remote places were practically dripping with the psychic imprints of grief—the same person coming back to this same place time after time.

There was something about it that felt strangely primal and unlovely: like animals designating a place in their cage far away from their food to deposit their excrement. He wondered if any of the scientists had made the connection for themselves, seeing grief not as a romantic indulgence they were too intellectual to engage it, but as a natural thing they were ashamed of. They must have been ashamed, to disobey Prakvar’s malediction.

Ksad, romantic that he was, would have loved the comparison. Rukosh could practically feel the giddiness of his lover through his fingertips as if it were the tingle of a phantom limb. Ksad would be laughing about the dogged way Rukosh was going about his security duties, sighing and teasing about how warm their bed was—and how _big_ it was without Rukosh between the sheets with him. But when Rukosh returned, Ksad would feel his whole day through his body and assure him that their home was for grief and love and laughter and anger and everything that made sentient creatures truly _matter_ in the universe.

So, dutiful as he was, in a way, he had been mourning. They were an extinct species holed up under a mountain on a planet devoid of animal life. No matter how much his fellow survivors talked around the grief they felt for their people, their empire, and the friends rotted away in the stasis pods that lined the walls of their new prison—no matter how much they attempted to stick to their task—they were fooling themselves, and General Rukosh knew it.

Mourning was their task, now. Whatever that labor produced, Rukosh could not see a way it could be anything other than a monument to their loss.

And as Rukosh had inspected the area, he thought of Ksad again, and allowed himself to rest. Only for a moment.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The surviving Protheans discuss what to do now, Kaidan and Shepard do their best to forget the war without forgetting themselves.

**Commander Shepard**

Kaidan offered to hail a cab exactly once, and never even looked in the direction of an idle transport after Shepard had said ‘no’.

In truth, Shepard was doomed to walk everywhere on the Citadel the moment Kaidan had light-heartedly suggested that a walk would be good for him. This wasn’t what Kaidan had meant, he knew that, but he was committed now. Pushing forward, no matter how much his muscles ached, the braces moving his legs forward anyhow. That was familiar.

At every vista and promenade, Kaidan would take the opportunity to sit. But Shepard wasn’t taking the bait: he stood and stared, Kaidan watching his back.

“Do you remember this place?” Kaidan said into his ear, leaning against the railing. They had made there way, briefly, down into the Ward junction, the great windows that looked out over the wards. “We stopped here our first visit to the Citadel,” he ran his fingers down the small of Shepard’s back. “It was the first time I knew you were special. Special to me, I mean.”

They’d talked about how big the station was, they talked about Council races, Ash had tried to flirt…

“…why?” It came out more abrupt than Shepard had meant it.

“Maybe I’m just a sucker for an incredible view.” Kaidan whispered at his cheek and the words became a kiss. “

“Maybe you’re just a sucker,” Shepard rolled his eyes, the smile making his cheek tingle where Kaidan had laid the kiss.

“I’m happy with the outcome, either way. Come on,” Kaidan sat, and all but pulled Shepard down next to him, a promise in his voice. “I wanna hold you here.”

“O-okay.”

But they weren’t facing the field of stars beyond the dusky blue of the Ward arms, they were facing the junction: people coming and going as if half the station were not still rubble. And even with Kaidan’s arms around him, Shepard felt alone. These people could forget what had happened here and he couldn’t.

They had walked around and Kaidan had pointed out every landmark they knew. But Shepard had felt surprised each time that a unit of Cerberus soldiers hadn’t burst around the corner. Or a pack of mercenaries come bolting out of the bank. Or a rogue AI setting off a bomb in some upstairs storage room. Every inch of the Citadel was connected to Shepard’s memory through a taut cord of battle, pulling at his adrenaline and urging him to _fight_ and _run_ and _protect Kaidan_. But Kaidan wasn’t in armor, and the shops were there to sell things, and the vistas weren’t vantage points for snipers.

“It was the first time I had seen you talk about… well, all this,” Kaidan nuzzled into Shepard’s cheek. They were one of many couples on the promenade. Shepard tried to convince himself of that, as if remembering that fact would help him feel Kaidan’s breath on his neck in the way he had the night before Kronos Station.

“What? Sorry… I think my mind wander,” he swallowed hard, but Kaidan only snickered.

“Standing here, looking at the Citadel. When I knew you were special,” Kaidan repeated. “The way you talked about the Council, I knew you had what it took to be a Spectre. And I probably started falling in love with you right there.”

It was his service record that had convinced the Council, it was his optimism that had convinced Kaidan. What was he now?

He clung to Kaidan, he listened to the beat of his heart and tried to hear it like he used to.

 

++

 

**General Rukosh**

It was a long time, then, until any of the researchers saw Rukosh again, only his  daily security reports assuring them he was still anywhere in the facility. Rukosh found eavesdropping distasteful, as a rule. All information was useful, but most prattle one caught standing in doorways could be obtained through quicker means. Still, as he passed through the facility unseen, he heard plenty of gossip peppered between strings of equations and figures he could not understand.

 _“Doctor Ksad saved his_ lover _instead of saving Pokesh? Or Divran? So we have a withered old general instead of someone useful to help us complete the Conduit!”_

 _“The war is over. Doctor Ksad knew the war would be over by the time we entered stasis! Why would_ any _of the security personnel be needed? If anyone’s pods had to be cut, why wouldn’t General Rukosh and the others of his kind be the first to throw away?”_

_“Who is to say that Rukosh Ishan was not Vigil’s highest priority for energy conservation? He was the last Vigil woke…”_

_“He still has that area locked down? How did he do that? Is_ that _why he was prioritized so highly? He’s the only one with the codes? No, that can’t be right, I’m sure everything was accessible when I woke up. I’d say he reprogrammed everything to his access code, but I can’t imagine the old soldier has that kind of programming ability…”_

_“Were you a great friend of Ksad? Neither was I. I suppose even a genius can have a soft heart… still, I can’t help but to think… would Ksad still be alive if he hadn’t prioritized his jack-booted lover over himself?”_

_“Did Ksad think we needed protecting? From what? The whole discord so far has come from that general stirring up trouble with Doctor Prakvar in the mess last week!”_

_“Of course I trust Doctor Ksad’s vision! It was an honor to be chosen for this position. Still, while it’s undeniable that General Rukosh kept the facility very safe during the war…”_

_“If Ksad planned the priority list, he must have imagined the scenario we are in now. What do you suppose his vision was? What did he want us to do? Does Vigil know? Did he tell Rukosh and the old brick is too stuck in his own grief he won’t tell us? I never realized how many things Doctor Ksad was managing, here.”_

Sometime later, Doctor Korma actually invited Rukosh to a briefing. It was meant to be held in Vigil’s chamber, but Rukosh flatly refused to meet there.

 _“Alright, General, how about the conference room on level fifteen instead?”_ The archivist was pleasant, even though Rukosh could hear another voice muttering in the background.

“That is acceptable.”

 _“We won’t need to consult with Vigil for this briefing anyhow,”_ Korma replied, likely more to the muttering voice on his end of the channel than to Rukosh, _“And he’ll be listening_ anyway _. Two hours, if you please?”_

“Yes.”

Rukosh closed the channel so Korma didn’t add more ‘pleasantries to the surly general’ to his list of offenses against whatever muttering idiot was in the room with him.

General Rukosh left for the conference room immediately.

He wasn’t surprised that he found no listening devices of any kind, but neither was he embarrassed that he had looked for them.

” _General Rukosh,”_ a written message appeared on his display. Vigil. He could have contacted the general vocally, but appeared to respect Rukosh’s insistence to not hear his voice. The courtesy only made Rukosh more upset. _“I have noticed you have inspected the conference room for spy devices. I was hoping to inform you that my own system monitors the situation in the conference room.”_

“Yes, of course,” Rukosh said dully. If he looked up he would have expected to see the new hardware secured to the ceiling when Ksad’s team had hastily connected the whole complex to the new VI’s mainframe. Except the hardware looked as old as the rest of the old ruin, now.

 _“Please do not misunderstand, General,”_ the green text appeared after a brief pause. _“I do not mean to suggest you should not secure the room.”_ That was what Rukosh had thought, and it was the sort of thing only Ksad would have noticed through his even tone and stable aura. _“Instead, I wished to request that I might listen in on the briefing, as Doctor Korma suggested.”_

“You are asking permission?”

_“Yes, General. If you do not wish it, I will ask Doctor Korma to brief me at another time. If it will facilitate a more honest conversation, I will instruct you in how to disengage my monitoring hardware in this room. The security of this facility is my utmost priority.”_

Rukosh’s biotics flickered, a thread of dark energy snaking around the optics behind the wall.

“I would need no help pulling out your ears in this room, machine.”

_“As you say.”_

Rukosh almost grimaced at that. He could practically hear Vigil’s placid voice.

“Blacking out a room in the complex is a liability and you know it.”

_“The security of this facility is my highest priority, and you are in charge of security. I respect your assessment.”_

“Listen as you will, machine. Do not contact me this way again.”

There was no message in reply. Forbidding the program from contacting him had been an emotional mistake: what if it needed to report to him? Oh well, it was a mistake he was willing to make for now.

He sat there for the next two hours, modifying his layout of the secured parts of the facility and prioritizing which he’d be working on next. The hall down to the inussanon terraforming engines was still sealed. Rukosh was surprised to find that. When he had first taken over planetary security, he had found those halls ‘permanently sealed’ through a sophisticated algorithm the first colonial warden of Ilos had placed on them centuries earlier after the engines had been adjusted to build an optimum Prothean world.

Rukosh had broken the algorithm easily, and had established a new, vastly more secure one. He had given Ksad the code, and had expected that—in the event of either his or Ksad’s death in the stasis pods—his lover would have made sure that any survivors had access to _everything_ in the facility, inusannon tunnels included.

It seemed like a troubling oversight, despite the relative unimportance of those old terraforming engines. But Rukosh was a master strategist, and in his way, so was Ksad.

“I see, Ishan,” he said under his breath. “Still playing your gamut from beyond, are you?”

Then he remembered Vigil was still listening, and returned to his work.

The researchers filed in one by one or in pairs, and placed themselves around the table as they entered. The table easily sat more than 60 personnel, and the atmosphere became uncomfortable as the dozen Protheans noticed how spaced they were. Rukosh assumed the days of avoiding each other and burying themselves in centuries of data had taken its toll. They shuffled back and forth, making a cluster of six here, then a cluster of four and five on opposite ends of the table. Eventually, they all centered on Rukosh, who would not move.

The meeting ambled to a start: every person in the room from the Lead Researchers to the Junior Staff was a genius, but none of them were that pointed mix of genius and administrator that Ksad had been.

“I have something I would like to discuss before we carry on with… this little assembly,” Yssynik, the lanky and tired signal specialist cut in after a few awkward attempts had been made at setting an agenda. “General Rukosh, it is a security question, actually. We have a great deal of work ahead of us, we are stuck with these” he held up one of the data-pads “ _things_ as long as we’re here, but I would like to petition that, in light of our circumstances, we rescind the security protocol forbidding us to touch. Our work would go more smoothly if we were able to link.”

Rukosh could feel the tone in the room shift, from the way the auras of the others flared, it was clear they wanted the same.

“No,” Rukosh was surprised when it was Korma who spoke up, even despite the conflict evident in his wavering psychic imprint. “’No physio-psychic interfacing on lab levels.’ That was the _first_ rule Doctor Ksad ever instituted when he took over the facility. We all went through the quarantine. The facility is designed for manual operation, if we start linking now…” he lightly slapped his palm on the table to punctuate each item on his list. “We will rush. We will make mistakes. We will miss something.”

“Doctor Prakvar and I have been discussing it,” Yssynik glanced over at the old scientist, who’d been sitting far back in his chair, hands folded on his stomach. Rukosh smiled at the obvious tell in Yssynik’s voice, even though his aura didn’t show it. The idea of discussing something with _Doctor_ _Prakvar_ , as if that gave the idea more legitimacy. “We believe work would progress faster with physio-psychic linking,” then he added quickly, gesturing round the room, “I would have discussed it with _all_ of you, of course. We have all just been so busy and spread out, I have not seen anyone else in a week and a half. But, certainly we can all agree, yes? Surely this meeting would already be over if we could touch-transfer.”

“It might actually make me useful, for a change!” Jinspar’s chair squeaked forward as he grinned his way between Yssynik and Prakvar’s covert exchange of glances. “Then Shalteen wouldn’t have to spend so much time explaining everything about capacitors to me!” Shalteen only continued to stare at the ceiling.

“I still think it is a bad way to go,” Korma insisted.

“Regardless,” Yssynik turned his eyes on Rukosh, “As our head of security, it is the General’s decision.”

“No.”

Yssynik blinked.

“N-no?”

“No. The protocol stands. Next issue.”

Yssynik looked dazed and Rukosh could feel Prakvar bristling, but Korma quickly moved on to another topic. It was bleakly amusing to Rukosh how little those on the science team thought of him, and yet—inclined to be polite, in that condescending way intellectuals always obliged to be—he could still say ‘General’ as if it were not stale bread in his mouth, call Rukosh ‘head of security’ and not make it sound like a lament.

“Doctor Vlokiv,” Prakvar’s bubbling irritation finally boiled to the surface, interrupting Korma’s report mid-sentence. “Have you uncovered anything in regards to _how_ and _to what end_ the power reserve priority was assigned to our cryo pods.” He looked straight at Rukosh as he said it, though his aura gave away no malice. A challenge, perhaps? The doctor asserting that his control of his own psychic imprints was as refined as the famously stoic General Rukosh Ishan?

“I could not coax the answer out of Vigil,” Doctor Vlokiv, the Head of Ilos’ once enormous medical staff, was still entering his notes on Korma’s report into a small data-pad. “I could not find any information in the power allocation protocols. I could not uncover any clue in Vigil’s code. I could not glean a single trace from Doctor Ksad’s logs. And when I consulted the auguries, I did not learn a thing.” He cast a sidelong glance at Prakvar, his sarcasm a thick, sickly green in his aura.

“We have been talking about this for weeks,” Shalteen sighed. “We _are_ here, and we are _all_ that is left! Any reason Doctor Ksad might have had for choosing us over the thousands of—“

“It matters, Doctor Shalteen,” Prakvar cut in, “Because above and beyond deciding how we are going to _ration_ our provisions or learn the status of the ventilators, we _must_ begin to consider what our mission is now that we few _are_ here!”

Since the moment Prakvar had mentioned power reserve priority, the four junior staff—all looking somehow more wide-eyed and younger than even Doctor Jinspar—had been giving each other nervous looks. They had clearly been wondering why, of all the prominent scientists working on Ilos, a foursome of junior technical recruits had been chosen with the likes of Doctors Shalteen, Prakvar, Jinspar, and Vlokiv to survive the end of their species.

Rukosh knew that certainly the others had wondered this to themselves, they were all eminent minds sharing space with what were all essentially repair workers. The old general was experienced enough to recognize that a great deal of the suspicious mutterings he had heard about his own value to the project were overcompensation to keep anyone from asking about the four nervous Juniors. Whatever they were, they were scientists. Rukosh was a valuable scapegoat, and a bastard, besides. Or perhaps the Senior scientists didn’t argue because they enjoyed having the Juniors to order about doing the menial work.

Still, the Juniors were clearly absorbing the challenge Prakvar had meant for him, and Rukosh could feel their attention slipping and their fear rising. It was no surprise the rest couldn’t sense it, though: by now they were all engaged in a fierce argument.

“Doctor Ksad was a brilliant man!” Yssynik urged, quiet voice strained by emotion, “He would not have selected us if he did not find us useful!”

“Sure, sure sure,” Jinspar shook his head, “At this point…. Can we all just please accept that as a ‘good enough’ answer—“

“Or we’ll be at each other’s throats,” Korma finished.

“ _Listen_ to me, all of you!” Prakvar roared, he leaned forward on the table, basking in the silence he’d made. “We _will_ accept that Doctor Ksad selected all of us…” he cleared his throat, “Selected _certain personnel_ with contingencies in mind. In order to decide what we must do now, it would help to see the pattern in Doctor Ksad’s selection. Yes?”

Jinspar frowned, and Rhavka leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“He would have left the right people behind to carry out the plan he had in mind.”

“Oh,” Jinspar smiled, muttered a quick thank you to Rhavka, then addressed the group, “So it’s a puzzle then! How do a handful of signal techs, conduit experts, a doctor, an archivist, a handsome exobiologist, and a military legend rebuild an empire!”

As always, Jinspar’ aura was strangely tinted: vibrant in the excitement of ‘catching on’ but oscillating as if the information was… frightening? Rukosh couldn’t tell.

Considering everyone in the Ilos facility had literally been prepared to wake up after the end of civilization, the small group descended into unprofessional bickering as soon as they began to review the contingency plans the Empire and Ksad had organized to bring the Prothean Empire back to life.

Two klicks from the research complex, in the crater of another ancient, dead volcano, there were five massive Prothean dreadnoughts that had been painstakingly grounded and shielded. Each was large enough for a thousand Protheans to search the galaxy.

“Our numbers are reduced,” Vlokiv stroked an eyebrow drowsily, “But the first plan is the best: we man one of the ships, we use the map to begin awakening other refuge complexes.”

“We don’t have the man-power to operate a Kivraluk Dreadnought!” Korma scoffed, “Minimum crew complement is sixty-three, and _that’s_ with modifications!”

“Every ship on the surface was retrofitted for minimum crew before they were grounded, I think.” Rhavka’s quiet comment was lost in the scuffle.

“We were chosen to survive because we are l-luminaries of our people, yes?” Yssynik said, trying to assume Korma’s energized stillness or Vlokiv’s shrewd calm and landing somewhere in the middle. “We can surely bring that number down? Retrofit one to fly with only twelve?”

“Does anybody in this room know the inner workings of a Kip… Kivar…Kiv… of a dreadnought?” Prakvar asked dryly, favoring the four trembling Juniors with an extra-long stare until they shook their heads vigorously. He regarded his other companions with bitter smirk, his point made.

“Shuttles?” Jinspar asked.

“We would be lucky if we made it to the Relay.” Yssynik had become sullen.

“Much less able to reach another refuge complex,” Prakvar added.

“If the Empire agreed to even form any other ‘refuge complexes,’” Shalteen sighed from the back of her throat. “Or, what was it Ksad called them? ‘Cold Storage Tanks’?’ We don’t _have_ a map, we have a list of sites Ksad recommended to the Empire before we went dark.”

Rukosh had accompanied his mate on that particular journey, all the way to the Prothean Provisional Capital at N’qarn. The statement from the Emperor, passed down through the strategic council, had been that the Prothean Empire would not shrink away from any foe. They would fight down to every last man, woman, and child in the Empire and all its tributary systems. Ksad argued for three days, he had left them with his recommended locations, and then left quietly. Meanwhile, Rukosh had erased the last mentions and maps to the top secret facility on Ilos from even the most secure military computers. Ksad returned and began recruiting furiously.

A year later, Ilos went dark. The personnel locked away in storage to wait out the destruction of their Empire without a final letter to their family. For Ksad.

“The power cells of all five ships are dead. Decayed.” The room grew silent the moment Rukosh began speaking.

“…you have… inspected them, General?” Korma asked after a moment.

Rukosh nodded.

“There’s nothing we can do to, I don’t know, re-energize them? We haven’t got a rush, we can _learn_ how to fix them. By the Emperor, we could learn to _build_ new ships!”

“Then what?” Rhavka had been watching the conversation unfold, “Shalteen—Doctor Shalteen said we do not have any indication there _are_ other ‘Cold Storage Tanks’.” She watched the little twitch in Prakvar’s brow as she spoke, knowing, doubtless, that directly contradicting Prakvar’s stirring exhortation to believe the Empire had found a way to save others was likely to agitate the situation further.

“Repopulate, I suppose?” Yssynik offered.

“ _Doctor_ Yssynik!” Shalteen cried before Rhavka could even open her mouth to reply. “Don’t be disgusting! We are not going to wallow for a _moment_ in any talk of our ‘duty to reignite the fire of Prothean-kind!’”

“It _was_ one of the contingencies—“

“Five of our number don’t even have an interest in procreative intimacy, the General is a widower to boot—No. Stop.”

Yssynik demurred and Jinspar stifled a small laugh in his fist.

“The Conduit, people,” Prakvar growled. “Ksad intended the Conduit as our last escape off Ilos. It has come to that last option. We _will_ find others of our kind,” he glared at Rhavka, “No matter how _long_ it takes.” This time he gave Jinspar a look.

“Just as the General was thinking,” Vlokiv said mildly, not looking up from his data-pad as he idly tapped away at the interface.

Rukosh wanted to smile, but didn’t. He was uncertain whether the stoic doctor had actually been observing him through the back-and-forth, or if he was only saying it to get under the skin of Prakvar as payback for doubting the doctor’s thoroughness.

“…Oh?” Prakvar replied through grit teeth.

Vlokiv looked up, as if suddenly inconvenienced by having to explain his rationale.

“Hm? Yes, of course. He knew the ships were hopeless, knows better than anyone that the Empire was unlikely to have built any other stasis complexes, _and_ he knows that _some_ of us—and thank you for stating it all so kindly, Shalteen, but facts are facts—are _too old_ to breed for love of Empire or anything for that matter.” Vlokiv returned to tapping away at his pad, “No one asked. Either of us.”

Jinspar’ aura flared with undisguised pride, but the other scientists around the table seemed to take the opportunity to practice controlling their reactions, though Shalteen snickered.

“Looks like it’s about time _we_ got to work, wouldn’t you say, Doctor Prakvar?” the Conduit specialist grinned, “The future of the Prothean people is in our hands.”

Prakvar was too preoccupied suppressing his instinct to glare at General Rukosh to respond immediately.

“E-excuse me,” Yssynik raised his hand, his aura quivering with a twist of academic anger. He wasn’t accustomed to speaking this brusquely—Rukosh knew it before Yssynik even opened his mouth. “But this seems to be a perfect demonstration of exactly why we should be allowed to link with one another! This e-entire meeting, could… could have been resolved in moments. General Rukosh, I _must_ insist!”

“No.”

Prakvar’s mouth twisted into a scowl and even Korma looked uncomfortable.

“ _Who_ is going to find out about our ‘top secret research?’” Yssynik all but shouted, his aura a violent blue that crackled against the anger of his colleagues. “What _possible_ greater good is served by not sharing wholly and completely all we are working on?”

Rukosh had to admit it was a fair question.

Ilos was the biggest secret in the Empire. Once you came to work on the Conduit project, you were unlikely to ever leave; still, the prestige of ‘serving the Empire’ at Ilos was so enormous as to make the sacrifice bearable. This strict isolation—combined with the sixty day quarantine in orbit before new residents were allowed to set foot on the planet—was not secure enough, however.

Originally, all physio-psychic interaction with terminals or others was banned on the laboratory levels. Experiences traveled easily between minds, and so all Prothean interface was built on this sort of linkage. Having developed the ability to psychically transfer knowledge and experiences one mind to another completely meant that Protheans did not retain things they had _merely_ read or heard. At least, this information was extremely difficult to accurately pass on to another mind. It greatly slowed down the operations on Ilos, but it meant that by the time any researcher returned to the apartment level on the surface, their top-secret work from the day would not pass to another Prothean…

“The security protocols will remain in place,” Rukosh said, carefully. He raised the energy output of his psychic aura—the calm of a thunderhead. The effect on the rest of the room was immediate. “Since we are the last of our kind, until we complete our task, we will _not_ risk the chance of indoctrination.”

Shalteen’s mouth fell open, and Prakvar stumbled back into his chair.

“Indoctrination?” Korma hissed. “Surely not! Protheans—the Prothean species that is—we… cannot be indoctrinated?”

Vlokiv was already shaking his head, still entering data on his pad. Rukosh met Korma’s eyes.

“Propaganda. Speciesism.”

“But… anything that was indoctrinated has been dead for at least two centuries!” Shalteen rested her forehead on her hand.

“Yes,” Rukosh answered simply. “Still. I will not risk our mission. I will defend this protocol with my weapon, if necessary.”

“Doctor Ksad feared the possibility…” Prakvar said, to himself more than anyone else. “That is why he instated the new security protocols…”

“I made the protocols,” Rukosh responded, his accent thick on the air compared to the sleek pontificating voices of the science team. “You have spoken about my battle at Atar Piza-A’ato. When the Reapers arrived, my fleet engaged from behind the gravity distortion of the moon we had pushed out of orbit. We surprised them, but they adapted too quickly. All at once, a dreadnought at our port-high flank, the _Vokor_ , attacked one of our own carriers. The man at helm had been indoctrinated by the Reapers. By the time he was wrestled from his post and killed, he had annihilated fourteen of our cruisers with the _Vokor’s_ heavy canons.”

The room was quiet for a moment, and in the silence, Jinspar drummed his fingers on the table, looked around the room with excitement.

“This is so incredible to hear this from your own mouth, General! I didn’t want to gush the other day, but I’ve studied the Bekjitar campaigns for years! Later in the battle, when the moon’s orbit descended and it split apart, the meteor shower obliterated the massive Reaper ground-force that had been tricked into believing the colonists were in hiding. Actually, General Rukosh had secretly evacuated them to—“

“Less than a half hour later,” Rukosh continued, the flatness of his voice spooking Jinspar to silence. “A heavy carrier turned its cyberwarfare suite on our own fleet before beginning a suicide run. On the command deck of the _Kevelik_ , I could only hear their screams over the comms as the crew clawed itself apart to retake the ship. It detonated its drive core a moment later, blowing a hole in our line.

“Not long after, the _Vokor_ dreadnought lost power. When it passed behind our line, it reactivated and began attacking us from behind once again. No one aboard wrestled the controls away, this time: the entire crew was indoctrinated. One by one, our ships began caving in on one another. By the time the _Yumaijo—_ left in the command of my XO Kajik Poshan—broke away to establish a new line against our own soldiers, the Reapers hardly had to fire a shot.”

Rukosh made sure to meet the eyes of everyone seated around the table.

“The indoctrination spread like wildfire.” He could recall the sight easily: his precise and trained soldiers spinning their ships in space, impossible to tell which were coming about to assist or attack. The Reapers slipping through to a lower orbit to pursue the refugees… “Indoctrination is a slow process. In other species, it requires a long time spent aboard a Reaper before one becomes in danger of realigning their thoughts to the Reapers’ purpose. They are spies and disruptors for their masters. But not Protheans.

“Once a Prothean is indoctrinated, the indoctrination is passed instantly and _completely_ through a physio-psychic link. All of our technology is based on this link. The officers who pried the _Vokor’_ s gunner away from his station were firing on our fleet in his place moments later. Receiving a beacon transmission from an indoctrinated commander would turn an entire battle-wing against the line. Soldiers sealing decks to prevent the advance of their indoctrinated comrades would turn and open the hatch a moment later and join them on the rampage.

“I listened to Kajik begging me to link with him through the _Kevelik_ ’s beacon. He was lucid. He sounded like himself. Even as he wiped out thirty-seven ships with _my_ capital ship’s guns, my friend explained calmly how decimating our fleet was the safest strategy: if the Reapers could seize control of the Prothean Empire quickly, it would spare everyone the pain of being hunted.” Rukosh took a deep breath. “I re-established the line and we destroyed every affected ship—whether one or a thousand soldiers were touched—and we destroyed the Reapers left in orbit.”

Rukosh’s thundercloud calm had pushed out against the edges of every other Prothean in the room. No one could look away. It wasn’t his worst memory from his career, it shone brighter than all the rest in his mind. Building his fleet’s future strategy against the Reapers meant reliving those hours again and again and again, so much that even his lover had grown sick of the memories. Sometimes, as they sat quietly together, Ksad would tell Rukosh he could feel “the Bekjitar memories” bubbling to the surface. He usually felt them deep inside Rukosh before Rukosh felt them himself.

“Alright,” Shalteen made a challenging smirk that somehow comforted Rukosh, a confidence built from years of knowing how to push too far. “We keep the no-touch protocols in place. Easy.”

“But… no one here is indoctrinated.” Yssynik didn’t look nearly so adamant as he had a moment ago.

“We cannot take the chance,” Prakvar said softly. “Every precaution…”

“General,” Jinspar piped up, “You said you wouldn’t let anything ‘endanger our mission.’ Once we get the Conduit operational… what _mission_ are we trying to accomplish?”

Even Prakvar looked up.

“I do not know.” Rukosh laid his palms flat on the table. “I do not care, either, anymore. But I will do it.”

 

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

“Shepard,” his voice was low, inviting, a soothing rumble beneath the sound of the fountains in the Presidium lake. “You’re sleeping on your feet, Shepard!”

Not true. But almost.

“The braces do all the work,” Shepard peaked out of one eye, “And with you leading me by the arm everywhere, thought I could squeeze in a little shut-eye.”

“Try to take one little walk around the park like a normal couple and this is the thanks I get?” Kaidan smiled. The grass felt good beneath Shepard’s feet. He had closed his eyes to let the quiet wash around him: the smell of Kaidan’s aftershave, the hum of skycars high above, the water, the smallest breath of wind. He tried to feel like a part of all that quiet.

But he wasn’t. He was like the Krogan memorial nearby: a larger than life, stone statue of a hero. The ones who knew him didn’t know him anymore, not since the Crucible. And the ones who had only heard of him---well, they would never see him as anything other than ‘Shepard.’ The worst was that didn’t even feel the need to rectify any of that, and that idea scared him enough to try anyway.

“Kaidan… I…” he swallowed. Kaidan let go of his arm and took a few quick steps out in front of him, turned around with a wicked grin.

“Come on,” he crooked his index finger at Shepard, teasing him to chase. “Let’s see just how much those braces do for you.”

He walked backwards, practically pulling Shepard forward with bedroom eyes, and—exactly because he didn’t want to—Shepard hustled after.

“Careful, Major Alenko,” Shepard panted, “All we need is a tabloid scoop about two war-heroes frolicking in the park before the ceremony.”

“God, getting caught _frolicking,_ ” Kaidan laughed, let Shepard catch and kiss him. “After everything we’ve been through, I’d welcome that.”

“Are… are you Commander Shepard?” a small voice behind Shepard exclaimed. “Oh… oh you _are!_ ”

An older woman rushed up, and Shepard held Kaidan to stop the other man from stepping between the two.

“Hello there, ma’am.” Shepard tried to straighten his body, but the braces would only allow him to unhunch so much.

“I thought it was you so—I hope you don’t mind—I followed you for a little bit, and then I was sure!” The woman had her hair pulled back into a tight bun, the wrinkles around her eyes practically glistening with the tears welling in her eyes. “How _are_ you, Commander?”

“Umm, I’m fine, just—“

“—and let me say _thank you_ for everything you’ve done!”

“Umm—“

“—and I promise I won’t take up too much of your time.”

“That’s—“

The woman activated an omni-tool on her arm. Kaidan leaned his forehead against the back of Shepard’s head, and Shepard could relate. Usually people didn’t recognize them, but when they did, it very quickly became a commotion.

“I’m sorry,” Kaidan whispered.

Kaidan had specifically told the Council that Shepard would _not_ need special escort today—and had taken great pains to explain to Shepard it would be a simple, fan-free holiday before the ceremony. But Shepard had known, deep down, that that wasn’t possible. It wasn’t conceited to say that everyone knew his name, and if they didn’t recognize him on sight, it was only a testament to his legacy: they couldn’t imagine such a tired-looking, broken man could possibly be THE Shepard they’d heard to much about. That was something Kaidan would never understand, a technicality that alienated them

“Here,” the woman located a file on her omni-tool. “Oh, this is going to sound so strange, but when I saw you I just _had_ to rush over. My son was such a huge fan of yours! Followed all your campaigns. You know, when the rescue shuttles picked us up and brought us to the Citadel, he was actually _excited?_ He thought he might get to see you. A few of the turian refugees down there said that they’d seen you walking through the refugee centers a few times. My son… he was so excited at the thought.” Tears welled up in her eyes, “Imagine if he knew… that I would run into you on the Presidium… the big dummy.”

Kaidan stepped forward but the woman messily wiped her nose on her sleeve and activated the queued file on her omni-tool.

 _“Oh, mom! Really?”_ It was the voice of a young man, the drone of a large and idle refugee camp muffled behind him. It was a sound Shepard knew well from visiting the docks during the war. Still: the boy was laughing, demurring in that way young people do when they want to be asked to do something, but don’t want to appear that they want to be asked. _“Are you—Is this recording? You’re recording this?”_

 _“Go ahead! Do it!”_ A woman’s voice, the mother.

 _“I just need to warm up my vocal-chords here,”_ the boy cleared his throat dramatically, recited a tongue twister or two, much to his mother’s impatience. _“Are you ready? Cuz I’m only gonna do this once. It’s gotta be my one perfect try? Ready? Ahem!”_

_“’I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel.’”_

The boy’s impression was really uncanny, even Shepard had to admit. It sounded just like him. The boy on the recording dissolved into f ts of laughter and the recording terminated. Cold and quiet tears trickled down the woman’s face, nodding to herself.

“He would do that impression all the time. People loved it around Camp,” she stuttered. “I… I told him it was probably good enough to fool people! That if he shaved his head he could… do an impression of you or something and… I don’t know. It would just make people laugh! He was so good at making people laugh…”

“Ma’am,” Kaidan spoke softly. “Your son, he sounds like… he’s a wonderful person.”

“He’s gone now,” she said bitterly. “Died in the explosion.” She looked at her omni-tool with worn grief. “I don’t even have any pictures of him, you know? Because we left the colony in such a rush. All I have is this audio recording. Just that little bit.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” Shepard ambled forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“The worst part about an audio recording is… you start to think about someone’s voice, right? And… my boy, you never knew what he was going to say next! All the ways he could make people laugh! He must’ve had.. fifty different ways just to say ‘I love you’ and he was making up more every day.” She breathed deeply, “And I’ll never hear those, anymore? Just this, the same thing, over and over. All I have is this, a little bit of his voice.”

Shepard stood stock still, feeling Kaidan’s level breaths behind his back.

“You’ll always have a piece of him,” he said softly.

“I know,” She wiped at her eyes. “It feels so greedy, but to hear his voice say just one little thing more. Every time I listen I think this time…” She sighed deeply, attempted to compose herself. “Commander Shepard, if my son’s watching down on us… I need him to know I kept my promise. Will you… consider recording a small message, for my son?”

Shepard did his best to smile.

“Of course I will.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two sides of the same conduit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading this story, even though I can't. seem. to get more than one chapter uploaded a day! I have never experienced this with AO3. But I don't wanna violate my chapter boundaries to post the whole chunk at once... thank you for reading despite the hullabaloo!

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh had rarely been down to the Conduit Site, managing most of the planet’s security from the operations facility on the surface. Ksad did most of his work down there, and while Rukosh loved to watch work, he understood the value in being able to work without distraction.

Like the rest of the planet, above and below ground, the crater that housed the Conduit was overrun with vines and fan-leafed flora. It was the pit of an ancient volcano, the center of the mountain in which the inusannon had installed the facility the Protheans had later added to. He knew there were 17 mass accelerated canons around the rim of the crater. They had all moldered and collapsed by now, and there was no power to run them anyway.

The last time he had been to the Conduit site, it had been a scaffolding on a dais, surrounded by crates of eezo. Now it was a perfectly proportioned mass relay in miniature. It looked haunting without its glowing heart and spinning gyros.

Shalteen, Prakvar, Jinspar, and three of the junior researchers were calling across the crater to one another, their voices echoing off the rock walls and dissipating in the fronds that pressed in around the monolith.

“No, we need a second capacitor!” Shalteen had taken to sitting cross-legged on the ground, a pile of ferns torn out of the soil to reveal a control panel. The wires she’d torn out of it tangled with the leaves and grasses. “It will take me weeks if I have to rebuild this one!”

“What?” one of the juniors called from the top of a tall tower about fifty meters away. Rukosh thought he could probably have climbed the tower just by scaling the vines that wrapped around it.

“The capacitors!”

“ _What_?”

“Capacitors!” Shalteen and Prakvar yelled together.

“Good, I will bypass!” The junior yelled back and disappeared into a mess of wires and conduits.

“The targeting array is completely misaligned!” Prakvar’s grizzled voice barely carried over the rushes, but he was trying to stand nobly by the relay itself. It was clear it was a pose. Every few keypad strikes he would need to lean on the edifice for support.

“We can’t do a thing about that until we have power, Prakvar!” Shalteen was practically quivering with rage, contending with the vines twisting into her circuits.

Rukosh walked up to the Conduit and pressed his palm to the relay. He could barely feel the imprint left by the original workers—nothing more than a feeling of pride and energy that used to permeate the whole facility, even beneath the impotent fear of the Reapers spread itself into every rock and panel. Like always, he searched for some sign of Ksad in the imprint. But there was nothing… except…

“General Rukosh,” Prakvar cast him a sidelong glance. “You honor us with your presence. Are you protecting us from something, here?”

Rukosh stepped in close, careful to whisper so that Shalteen wouldn’t here as she approached.

“Perhaps I can bring you a chair and protect you from your own ego, or your bad back?”

Prakvar squinted at him, but at the mere mention, another quiver of pain shot through his stiff body.

“We’ll need new calculations from Vigil,” Shalteen inserted herself between the two, arms folded. She radiated an impatience that overcame Prakvar’s aura of frustration. “Jinspar! Get over here.”

Jinspar was sucking on the tip of one of his fingers, clearly reeling from a severe shock at one of the dais access terminals.

“There’s a problem with the… uhh…” Jinspar tapped his forehead as if he’d shake the term free. “Phasing array?”

“Of course there is,” Shalteen huffed.

“We never solved the phasing problem before the facility shut down.” Prakvar leaned against his console with both hands.

“How long until the Relay is ready?” Rukosh asked, releasing a brief flash of irritation to disguise the aura of panic he’d felt rise up from Prakvar when his knee almost buckled.

“That depends,” Shalteen answered. “If we had our full team, we might get to the point of being able to reconstruct this monstrosity in a week. Calibrating it… well we simply don’t know. We’ve never been able to create a successful link.”

“I thought there had been a successful test,” Jinspar crossed his hands behind his back, sidled up next to Rukosh.

“We fired the core, that was all,” Prakvar dismissed it with a wave. “And the model on Cotoxi fired, as well.”

“There was _ranjia_ and everyone was laughing,” Jinspar frowned. “Even though there was no successful slipstream?”

“The first time since the inusannon created the—“ Shalteen stopped herself, “Since _the Reapers_ created the relays that anyone had been able to even do that much.”

Rukosh could feel the pit of her stomach drop out when she mentioned the Reapers, the tension in Prakvar’s shoulders, and the odd giddy firing of nerves in Jinspar’ aura.

The Cotoxi conduit was the sort of thing the researchers always spoke of in hushed voice. All except Ksad, who had overseen the lion’s share of the Cotoxi project before coming to Ilos to take over there. Describing the work they’d been doing on Cotoxi was a passion: so many late nights with his head on Rukosh’s chest, talking about the physics of mass free conduits and illustrating as if his either fist were a pair of relays.

Rukosh tried not to think about that. The auras of the others were already so muddy with nervousness, the biting grief that chewed at him would only bring down productivity throughout the facility. He didn’t feel any need to lie to the team to keep their spirits up, but it was his responsibility to keep his imprints in check.

“Can we use it to send a message?” Jinspar whispered, staring up into the sky as if he could see the path of the slipstream corridor glimmering up into the red clouds. “To… find out if we are still alone?”

“If we could, it would not be smart,” Shalteen answered. “Surely the Reapers left behind a sentinel to open the Citadel relay at the end of the next cycle. Who knows what its capabilities are. If it detects transmissions so soon, we’ll be dead before we know it.”

“Hmm.” Jinspar kept looking up at the sky.

“You yourself wrote that in your assessment of the Reaper plan, did you not?” Rukosh folded his arms in front of him.

“Yes I did,” Jinspar nodded shyly, “Surely whatever sentinel left behind has depowered by now? Likely near the galactic core… out of the way of accidental discovery? They could not remain ‘awake’ for 50,000 years. I could program a signal they would not recognize…”

“No,” Rukosh dismissed. “The only way to safely send a message would be through a beacon.”

“I thought there _were_ no beacons on the planet?” Jinspar exclaimed, “What with the security protocols…”

“There aren’t.”

“We _could_ theoretically transmit a signal across the relay network,” Prakvar shook his head. Shalteen rolled her eyes. “But the Cotoxi relay is the only one we have any chance of connecting a slipstream to.”

“How do we confirm whether the Cotoxi relay is still active?” Jinspar asked. Prakvar and Shalteen looked at one another for a long moment.

“Only activating the relay and seeing if it establishes a connection with Cotoxi.”

“This is a _primary_ Relay?” Jinspar asked, suddenly piqued.

“By the Emperor!” Shalteen snorted, “Of _course_ it’s a priRhavka relay! It took decades to establish a connection with Cotoxi. Connecting it to native relays would have taken another century!”

“The Reapers built them in a single cycle,” Jinspar looked up at the Conduit reverently. “Is it any wonder we were defeated…”

“Enough of that,” Prakvar growled, pushed himself fully to standing. “Everything on Cotoxi went according to plan before the purge. They had the greatest minds in the galaxy working on it.”

“The second greatest minds,” Shalteen quipped.

“I have never heard of Cotoxi…” Jinspar touched the relay gently. “Where is it?”

“I am not surprised you haven’t heard of it,” Rukosh interjected. “It was almost as deep a secret as Ilos. And when the Reapers found it, they glassed it.”

“Nine hundred of the Empire’s best researchers,” Prakvar whispered.

“One of your campaigns?” Jinspar asked Rukosh, after a long pause.

“No.” He faced Prakvar, “The population of Cotoxi was sixteen thousand total, including maintenance and colonists.” Prakvar looked away and Rukosh continued. “But by leaking its location to the Reapers, it allowed the Urjurnis Fleet to escape the Pekanda Veil and regroup with the Agoya Fleet. The move allowed the fleet to defend the entire Anjelic for another fifty days. Eighteen colonies had time to evacuate.”

“The price of war, I suppose,” Jinspar nodded solemnly.

“Not fully,” and now Rukosh watched Prakvar closely. “To hide Cotoxi, the Empire had erased the whole nebula from all records. Leading the Reapers there exposed three other prothean worlds to attack.” Everyone knew that when he said ‘prothean’ he meant members of their civilization, not their species. One of the other species that had been conquered millennia beore Rukosh was even born. “Trillions were killed when the Reapers swept through the nebula.”

“Oh.” Jinspar looked away.

“We _fed_ them that intel?” Shalteen asked, perplexed. “I had heard Cotoxi was betrayed—one of the _melkin_ officers was indoctrinated!”

“The order came from High Command,” Rukosh answered flatly, “If they were indoctrinated, I do not know.”

“So, Cotoxi…” Jinspar’s aura was one of surging excitement. “Why are we going there if the planet’s a waste?”

“We’re not going to Cotoxi,” Shalteen sighed.

“The Cotoxi Relay, the other terminus of this Conduit.” Prakvar gently bent a knee and brought himself slowly down to sit, leaning his aching back against the relay. “It’s on the Citadel.”

“W-we’re going to the _Citadel_!” Jinspar aura swam with mingled enchantment and disbelief.

“It was always ‘Plan B,’” Shalteen sighed. “The only place we might find an operable ship.”

“A ship?”

“Likely not,” Rukosh watched two of the Juniors welding together a gyro. “But a place we might be able to make a difference.”

“We have to get the relay working, first,” Prakvar struggled to come back to his feet, and Rukosh took him by the forearm to stabilize him. The researcher didn’t meet his eye when he thanked him. “Alright everybody, back to work.”

 

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

“Does it still make your teeth tingle?”

The ‘Relay Monument’ had been missing from the Presidium for years: spirited away for further research by the Citadel Special Projects. Since the end of the war, it had been restored to its former place, now with an added multi-lingual placard about how it was used by Commander Shepard to save the Citadel from Saren Arterius and his geth invasion.

“Yeah,” Kaidan chuckled. “It _does_ still make my teeth tingle.”

“Guess I figured they would have shut it off.” Shepard was feeling dizzy from all the walking, and got a strange sense of vertigo looking up the relay.

“I think it’s one of those things: once it’s on, it can’t be turned off.” He bumped Shepard’s shoulder, “Kinda like you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Shepard scoffed. “Can’t… take me down without a fight.”

“Or with one.”

Shepard didn’t respond, but was acutely aware of the way his legs quivered underneath him, and the braces tightened to compensate.

“Ugh, this plaque,” Kaidan’s sneer brought Shepard’s gaze back down to the base of the relay. “Amazing, even after the Reapers show up and tow the Citadel straight to Sol, they still call it a _geth_ attack all those years ago? Disgusting!”

“Trying to cover their ass, I guess,” Shepard pushed himself up off the railing. “Can’t have anybody know that the Council knew about the Reapers three years before the invasion…”

“Everybody knows anyhow,” Kaidan helped take his arm before he could limp off to the nearest bench alone. “It’s just damn cowardly.”

“Least I get to see how my name looks in volus,” Shepard tried to smile.

“Remember shooting through that thing in the Mako?” Kaidan asked, a warm smile on his face as he eased Shepard down onto a bench.

“Like it was yesterday.”

And that was the truth.

“Thought I’d seen everything already on that mission,” Kaidan leaned back, followed Shepard’s sight-line back to the relay monument. “Ancient rachni and a Prothean city… but driving down that corridor, rushing that Conduit on Ilos… that’s still something, even after everything else that’s happened.”

Shepard could remember the way it had felt. The rush of blood, the way his vision tunneled in front of him. A blazing, blue light beyond a field of Colossi. Wrex doing his best to mow them down while Shepard didn’t even attempt to evade. Kaidan had had his hand on Shepard’s shoulder, urging him on silently, until the last second before they made contact.

A flaming Mako flung across the galaxy and hurled onto the floor of the Presidium.

“It’s funny to remember that mission,” Shepard said quietly. “I know I didn’t feel like it at the time. But I remember being… giddy? Almost? Like I never… nevermind.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“…you do?”

“Yeah,” Kaidan nodded firmly, eyes unfocused, looking through the relay. “Felt like I was where I was supposed to be. Like that mission was meant for me. Always meant for me. Felt like there was no way to fail.”

“Yes! But—“

“—but I know I _didn’t_ feel like that when we came flying through that monument. Yeah.”

“That’s exactly it,” Shepard stared wistfully, watched the shadow of stubble on Kaidan’s throat when his lover swallowed.

“Didn’t feel like that at the end,” Kaidan sighed. “Um, on Earth, I mean. Racing to the beacon. I think about that and I still can’t believe I lived through that.” He took Shepard’s hand in his, squeezed like he needed to be sure it was real.

“Y-yeah.”

Kaidan had never talked about the end of the war like this. Shepard would sink into a depression, and Kaidan would pull him out. Shepard would remember a dead friend, and Kaidan would remember them in a way that celebrated their life. But he’d never talked like this. Shepard squeezed his hand back.

“You’ve been struggling a lot today, huh?” It was barely more than a whisper. “Lately?”

It took him a long time to answer.

“Kaidan.” It was all Shepard could bring himself to say, but Kaidan knew what he meant.

“I’m just going to talk, and you can agree or disagree or… I dunno. Or you can lay your head on my lap and get a little sleep, okay?”

“I’ll… take you up on that sometime…” Shepard tried to smile. Kaidan wasn’t fooled.

“Walking around this place… it’s hard not to see geth around every corner. Cerberus. It’s the same way I felt after you died. I was stationed out of the Alliance dock and… I was miserable. Every time I saw a blown-out shop or a shut-down district, it felt like that wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d been quicker getting to that Conduit. I should have tried harder to convince the Council about the Reapers—I know, I wasn’t a Spectre then and I was just a lieutenant. But it was a big deal. There must’ve been something more I could do.” Kaidan sighed, “And I saw _you_ around every corner. But it wasn’t, obviously. And… ‘what was the point?’ I thought. I had no new mission. No new friends. No you.”

Shepard squeezed Kaidan’s hand so hard he winced.

“With Saren,” he choked out. He stilled his breathing, tried to calm himself down. “I knew what needed to happen. Stop Saren from activating the Citadel. In London… on the Crucible… I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know the objective. ‘Plug this thing in’ and hope it worked? But _I_ was the one who made it up there. The only one. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I never have… shaken that feeling.”

Kaidan stroked his hair, kissed his closed eyelids.

“I can’t know how you’re feeling, exactly,” he whispered. “But I love you, and I want to understand.”

“I wasn’t _supposed_ to be the person on that Crucible, at the end,” Shepard sputtered. “I look back and… it doesn’t feel like I was ‘destined’ for that mission—yeah, that’s the way I felt about Saren, too—but against the Reapers… what an accident. Surviving: accident. And how lonely it felt… when we flew out of that relay, I had you at my back, trusted you. Fighting through London, I thought I was leading you to your death. Trying to put myself between every Brute and you.”

“That _is_ a lonely feeling,” Kaidan said. “I know what that’s like, too. Watching you run ahead, same as ever—but this time, I was in love with you.”

“I… never thought about…”

“I know. I know you’re lonely right now, Shepard. I don’t want you to be like that. I’m gonna do whatever it takes so you never have to feel alone again.”

It was a beautiful thought. Exactly the sort that was supposed to comfort him. So he nodded, as if it had. Kaidan kissed him as if he knew the truth.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilos is a world constantly on fire. Meanwhile, Shepard and Kaidan take a trip to the Wards.

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh had finished salvaging as much of whatever was still operational in the old security facility on the surface. For the most part, these odd jobs had consumed his days. No one else on the team could salvage the broken artillery littering the surface as efficiently as he could—and all the scientists seemed to haunted to help him dismantle what could be had from the dreadnoughts.

And none of them seemed to be comfortable being too far from Vigil for any length of time. It was just as well, since he could not stand to be near it at all.

He had loaded the tram with the parts he would be delivering to Rhavka and Korma, then turned back to the quiet, stone city. The bunkers that had been built at the base of the mountain had been almost seamlessly integrated with the architecture of the inussanon. When his office had been in this part of the facility, he could feel the difference in the two: the Prothean architecture, as much as it looked like the existing work, _felt_ Prothean. The inusannon statues, their arches and elevators, all were beautiful, but dead. It was a reminder of their extinction: the pride of their works and their eventual downfall at the hands of the Reapers.

These days, though, Prothean and inusannon all felt just the same.

“ _When our people first began colonizing this world, we built our settlements far from these old ruins. Once the research division took control of the planet and deported the colonists, we built our facilities into the ruins themselves: to be closer to the people we studied. We thought we were mining the secret of the Relays from our predecessors’ ashes. And now, it serves as a symbol: the Reapers do not care about our greatness or our empire. They want only to exterminate us, just as they did to the inusannon. That is what we must remind ourselves every day. This is why we wake up and live and work among these ruins. We are the last hope of our people—of all people in this galaxy. We must not fail!”_

Ksad gave that speech to each new group of researchers the empire sent him. He’d recited it so many times, Rukosh used to be able to feel the blue-green hue of the conviction it inspired staining the walls. He knew the words by heart—since he was present for each new check-in procedure. It was as much for their benefit as for Ksad’s: being assigned to Ilos was a lifetime appointment. Once you had heard the planet’s name, you could never leave.

The best and brightest were all prisoners, in a manner of speaking. Ksad needed to make sure they were at least inspired. And Rukosh made sure they were protected. And before long, there was no place else they wanted to be.

He wandered up to a terrace some ways away from the rest of the complex, the pavilion had a view of the surrounding forest. It was almost sunset, but there was no way to tell. Ilos had a cast of permanent twilight. In the west, a ribbon of red light that skirted the horizon was a giant forest fire, burning up untold kilometers of the surface vegetation. The black sky overhead wasn’t an empty void of stars, it was black smoke caught up in the atmosphere.

Ksad had been fascinated by Ilos. He would always call Rukosh out on nights like this to watch the fires. Ilos was a world perpetually on fire, a glorious, emerald cinder burning far away from the center of the Empire. A sunset of flames was always in view, any time you stepped out. Ksad had visited him at his office often, and they would come to this terrace. The fires burned for weeks before going out, and another had started somewhere near by the time it had. It was easy for Rukosh to believe the fire he was watching in the distance was the same he and Ksad had sat and watched in silence days before entering the pods. The last little moment of peace they could eke out together.

“General Rukosh,” came a voice behind him, the steady and lilting accent. Jinspar. “What are you doing out here?”

“You did not find me by chance,” Rukosh turned his head just enough to get Jinspar in his periphery. “Do not pretend.”

“No,” Jinspar said sheepishly, “I asked Vigil where you were.”

“It is unable to track personnel outside the facility. How did you find me?”

“I know he can’t track us out here,” Jinspar came and sat next to Rukosh, tucking his legs underneath himself. “He ‘guessed.’ That’s what he said, anyway. How did he know you would be here?”

“’It.’”

“What?”

“You said ‘he.’ Vigil is a virtual intelligence. An ‘it.’”

“Alright.” Jinspar shuffled uncomfortably, but his aura remained steady. If the exo-biologist was nervous being away from the facility’s VI the way the others were, it didn’t show in the signals he was putting out. “So you’ve just come out here to relax, have you?”

“Yes.”

Jinspar laughed.

“I’ve never pictured the great General Rukosh Ishan as the type to relax and enjoy the scenery! It is good!”

“You do not know me. At all.”

That bought him a few moments of silence, at least.

“So. The fires,” Jinspar murmured, “They just burn all the time?”

“The inusannon terraforming engine. A flaw in the matrix: too much oxygen in the atmosphere.” He remembered the reasoning just the way Ksad had explained it to him. The week they had ventured into engine itself.

Jinspar cast a wary look at Rukosh.

“If I may be honest, General, I was quite intimidated upon learning I would be working at the Ilos facility with Doctor Ksad Ishan, Doctor Prakvar, Doctor Shalteen… so many eminent names. But more than anything, I was excited to meet the legendary General Rukosh Ishan.”

“The facility required the best,” Rukosh didn’t make a habit of being conversational. “We were the last hope of our people. Even before the Reapers. If you were assigned here, it is because you were necessary to our survival. It is the same with me.”

“When you put it that way, I suppose I should try to be less star-struck.” For a moment, the glow on the horizon leapt up in silent tongues of actual flame, and then a wind blew through, carrying the dark, thrilling scent of burning trees. “Still, I had only been stationed here for a week before the shutdown. So many of the others had been here for years. I feel I hadn’t… earned my place, yet.”

“Ksad requested you personally.”

“To be one of those researchers Doctor Ksad Ishan determined was of high importance, even with the facility failing and Vigil rationing power. It is very humbling.”

Rukosh agreed with the boy’s assessment, but kept the bitterness from radiating out of him. Familiar and lonely tasks had kept him from ruminating on it, but now that he saw his fellow survivors every day, the thought had taken hold in his mind. The more he missed Ksad, the firmer a hold it took on him. The disdain, the bewilderment that Doctor Jinspar, exo-biologist, was ranked higher in the power allocations than Ksad himself… it licked at the corners of his control like the flames burning up the forest.

But in the military, he had always been famous for his stoicism: he didn’t radiate an aura unless he wanted to. He didn’t leave sense imprints.

“Yes,” he said at last. “It is.”

“I’ve been asking ‘why me?’ every day since I woke up…” Jinspar said soberly.

“No. You have not,” Rukosh turned to face him. “You know exactly why you are here. No one in the Empire has more experience with the Reaper-controlled creatures as you do.”

“With the exception of you, General.” The boy’s tone was positively worshipful.

Rukosh swallowed.

“I kill them, you study them. There is an important difference.”

“Is it true,” Jinspar scooched closer, “that at the battle of Felyk Majon your troops killed 92 Harvesters?”

‘Harvesters,’ as if they had not once been called the _kildibron_ , a sapient race of giants with beautiful wings and voices that carried for kilometers. That their ships had looked like bright, glorious birds hovering around the Citadel like a flock.

“Not so many. It was very early in the war,” he said quietly. “No one was keeping track of such things, yet. It was not needed for morale.”

“But you must’ve killed dozens! It’s said that they could devour an entire platoon in a single swallow!”

The Harvesters, the Reapers’ sick paraody of the _kildibron_ , swooping overhead. Their piercing scream. Everything the Reapers made had a terrible scream. They knew the effect it had on organics, the way those screams wove themselves into your dreams long after the battle was done, till the whole fabric of the dark behind your eyelids was a tattered gossamer of their cries and you couldn’t sleep.

“Mostly they harvested the dead. Collected corpses.”

“Must be terrifying to see!” He scooched closer.

It was still terrifying to remember, the harvesters plummeting out of the cloud layer and slamming to the earth, huge mouths voracious as they gobbled down the corpses the Reaper forces left on the battlefield. Devouring piles of bodies, then raising their giant heads to the sky to swallow their meal. And the hungry scream. Once, his platoon had hidden, waited under cover until the harvesters had completed their task and left. They ate until they could barely fly. They left nothing behind.

“They were a species once. Extinct as we are, but tortured first in a way we cannot imagine,” Rukosh let his disgust seep into his voice, but not his aura.

“Yes, of course,” Jinspar nodded. “And yet, oddly perfected, yes? I mean, designed for a purpose. To accomplish a purpose as efficiently as possible. All the Reapers’ creatures—abominations against all the Empire’s subjects—and yet, elegantly designed for their purpose. As a biologist… it is perversely fascinating.”

Rukosh did not look at him. The boy spoke like a researcher, certainly. Ksad spoke like that often: with that worming wonder that made every sting of horror in the universe the barb of some rich sweetness. But Ksad and he had gotten quite old together, and his mate had learned more about the ‘wonder’ of war than this poor boy ever would have a chance to in this newly empty universe.

“Weapons of war, that is all.”

“Perhaps…” Jinspar shrugged. “But a little like us, aren’t they? All of us perfectly suited to the task our Empire has left for us. Each of us given the resources by the Empire to be ideal for what must be done? You, me! Selected, too, above all the rest to live when everyone else has passed.”

“You would feel differently if you had seen what I have seen.”

“Perhaps, but the things I _have_ seen! The wonders the Reapers have built… I never visited the Citadel before it was annexed, but even the Relays! Our brightest minds have worked for decades and have only _just_ begun to discover their secrets. If we could only learn from the Reapers… from what they have left behind. Imagine the new Prothean Empire we could build.”

“You have dreams of empire, do you?” Rukosh asked mildly.

“Of course! I’m Prothean! It’s in our blood!” Jinspar laughed. “But I know what you’ll say, so I’ll leave that to greater men. Men like you. I have dreams of discovery, only. If only we had woken just a little earlier. While the Reapers were still in this galaxy, we could have studied them in secret.”

“You cannot understand the Reapers. They are advanced beyond our comprehension, and their motives are as alien to us as our Empire was to a salarian.”

“Perhaps that’s another thing I admire about them,” Jinspar shrugged. “’Admire’ is perhaps the wrong word. I am a biologist. They are fascinating life-forms.” He paused for a long moment, “If we’d woken earlier… more would be alive, as well.”

“We are here to do something important,” Rukosh said. He believed it in some non-specific way. Almost reflexively, the way one believes he must continue to breathe and eat and drink: because there are no other options. Still, these researchers were not accustomed to having their morale confronted in such dire ways. “If we had woken sooner, before the time was right, we could not accomplish what we must accomplish.”

“What _is_ it we need to accomplish? Vigil doesn’t seem to know.”

“He is a machine,” Rukosh sneered. “Why would he know?”

“He woke us,” Jinspar scratched a little symbol in the dirt between them. “He is the most capable mind, as a virtual intelligence. Funny how we answer to a machine, another way we are already more like the Reapers than we’d like to admit.”

Rukosh did not respond.

He glanced over, nervously. “If you don’t mind me asking, General, you seem to have known Doctor Ksad very well.”

“You have not asked a question.” The sun had gone down, but Rukosh could only barely tell, the glow against the billows of smoke was orange and gold as any sunset.

“Did you know him well?”

“You know the answer to that already,” Rukosh grunted.

“He was your mate.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“A long time.”

“Then… did you know the ranking of essential personnel.”

“No,” Rukosh answered thickly.

“Strange, since you were—are—the head of security…”

“As the head of the facility, only Ksad programmed the priority hierarchy.”

“Why…” He hesitated, but Rukosh knew his question before he formed the words.  “Umm, why do you suppose he made the decisions he did?”

“Rest easy, Jinspar,” Rukosh came to his feet. “I have heard you all gossiping in your offices and in the halls.”

The emotions practically steamed out of Jinspar’s aura, an echo to the words locked in Rukosh’s memory. Overheard conversations among the scientists, their barely disguised imprints left all around the facility when they became frustrated.

“You have nothing to worry about,” he continued. “Ksad loved me. But he valued life more than love. Life for this galaxy. He would not have saved me if I did not have a role to play. And I would be with him now, and not alone.”

“General,” Jinspar reached out a sympathetic hand, palm raised to allow Rukosh to read him. “ _I_ do not think those things about you. And I mourn your loss with you—not just because we’ve lost a great man—but because you’ve lost your love.”

Rukosh did not accept his hand, nodding instead. He turned to head back to his loaded tram, and the world continued to burn on every horizon.

 

++

**Commander Shepard**

It was Shepard himself who had suggested they visit the Wards, next. They hadn’t been anywhere besides their apartment on the Silver Sun Strip since they arrived, and visiting someplace like Flux or one of the darker streets might help Shepard feel slightly more anonymous. In truth, it was his personal test with himself. He knew the Presidium—for all the repairs it still had to undergo—was in much better shape than the Wards.

He wanted to prove to Kaidan he could handle the destruction. Maybe he wanted to prove it to himself.

When Shepard imagined the streets of the Citadel, or of Thessia or Palaven, for that matter, he was incapable of imagining them outside of propaganda images. Either, this far on, the denizens would still be wallowing in absolute poverty, picking over the ruins of a demolished life—children turned ice cold from providing for themselves in a city-turned wasteland. Or else, a poor but utopian community of neighborly love, people helping on another in a way they never had before their very lives were threatened by the Reapers.

The truth, of course, was something less interesting and ultimately less dire: much like surviving the war had been for Shepard. There were plenty of shops still closed down for repairs, still more closed because the owners couldn’t afford to keep them open in light of the decreased business in the district. The people still milled about and argued and haggled and met for lunch.

“Makes me think about Vancouver,” Kaidan said, after an advertising kiosk encouraged him to purchase a new sky car. “I guess you just get used to things the way they are, huh?”

“It’s a shame everything got trashed again so soon after Sovereign’s attack. Seems like everything had finally gotten put back together.”

“Had it?” Kaidan scratched the back of his neck. “Huh. I guess you didn’t see it while they were repairing it. I guess things change so slowly, you just never notice when things are ‘back the way they were.’”

“Maybe they never _get_ back to normal?” A gift shop Shepard used to frequent to buy fish for his aquarium was closed down and the ground inside was littered with merchandise fallen off the shelves. A few kids sat on the ground, sticking their arms through the slats in the locked gate, trying to reach far enough to get hold of one of the stuffed animals or model kits. A couple older boys walking past were laughing and teasing that it couldn’t be done, and that they’d never be able to do anything with the merchandise even if they _could_ get their hands around it. As if they hadn’t tried it when they were younger. “That shop’s never going to open up again. Not as a gift shop, anyway.”

“I guess not,” Kaidan frowned, “But all this is gonna fill back up again. So slow it’s going to be hard to even notice.”

He put an arm around Shepard’s shoulder.

 _“Aww, hello boys!”_ A nearby advert kiosk called out to them, “ _Your heart-rate and pheromone output indicates that_ you _are in love! Why not book a reservation for two at Hoogapin’s Lunch, Loft, and Love Lounge? Zakera Ward Level 48’s most intimate dining experience?”_

“But there are so _many_ intimate dining experiences on Zakera 48,” Kaidan winked at Shepard.

“C-commander Shepard! Major A-allegro!” came a voice from the transport hub. Kaidan frowned immediately, but Shepard couldn’t stifle a little chuckle.

“Kaidan Allegro, huh?”

“If someone wants _my_ autograph, I’m signing it ‘Allegro’ from now on.”

They turned in the direction of the voice and almost missed the volus waving to them from next to a skycar. He looked nervous, one hand on his car as if he were afraid it would fly away before he got the attention of the two war heroes.

“C-commander! Over here! Over here!”

Shepard couldn’t help but notice that Kaidan was in no rush to get over to the cab.

“Can we help you?” he asked the volus, voice curt.

“H-hello Commander. Major. I’ve b-been sent to escort the two of you to the c-celebration in y-your honor.”

It was Shepard’s turn to frown.

“That’s not for another five hours.”

“T-they sent me to come collect you. Sir. Sirs.” The volus nervously rubbed his palms together. “The official portrait is beforehand. S-something about it being ready for t-t-tightbeam by the time it airs? Th-they, uh, sent _me_ to deliver you. Admiral Hatchett said you two might l-like to,” he took a deep breath, “’sit together in the back’ for once?”

“How thoughtful of Admiral Hatchett,” Kaidan rolled his eyes. “Think we can pick up lunch on the way?”

The volus breathed raggedly, clutched his hands nervously.

“He’s joking,” Shepard hobbled up to the skycar. “Come on, Allegro. Let’s see some of that speed you’re known for.”

“Well, Hackett’s right about one thing,” Kaidan worked his arm behind Shepard’s shoulders once they were airborne. “We’ve never gotten the chance to just… ride together before, have we?”

Always rushing to some crisis or another. It should have made Shepard feel better, that there was time to rest now. But all he could summon was a weak little smile. Kaidan knew how to leave the past in the past, and he wanted Shepard with him once he did. And Shepard wanted nothing more than to just enjoy the ride with his boyfriend, but—

“Wait a second,” Kaidan looked out the window. “We’re not heading for the Presidium…”

The volus driving the car made a strangled little noise, and suddenly a blast shield cut the back seat off from the cockpit.

“I-I’m sorry!” the volus said over the comms. “W-we will be t-there soon! I’m sorry! Just following orders!”

Kaidan activated his omni-tool: all outgoing comms were dead. He turned to Shepard.

“If we just got kidnapped, I’m gonna scream.”

“I think… we definitely just got kidnapped, Kaidan.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ilos team needs more power, Shepard and Kaidan end up having more of an adventure than they intended.

**General Rukosh**

The dais rumbled and the entire crater of the Conduit site echoed.

“You’re sure the batteries from the—“

“Yes! Yes, dammit! _Yes_!” Shalteen cut Jinspar off with a shout. Of course, she would have to shout over the roar of the Conduit coughing and struggling to come online.

Rukosh had heard the rattle of the start-up protocols early this morning and had driven down to the site to watch the progress. Prakvar was on his back beneath the dais, adjusting connections, Rukosh had to imagine it took quite a bit of work for him to scooch under there.

“Shalteen?” Prakvar cried from under the dais. “Shalteen!”

“Doctor,” Rukosh got her attention, pointed to where Prakvar’s legs were sticking out a few meters away.

“Shut it down, Shalteen!” the old doctor shouted.

She looked at Rukosh helplessly.

“He says ‘shut it down,’” Rukosh supplied.

“Tell him to stuff it!” She scoffed, leaning over her readouts, “We are not shutting it down!”

He gave the doctor a shaded look.

“Shalten! _Shalteen!”_ It had become an urgent whine. Shalteen’s aura pulsed with impotent rage, but she began the shut-down procedure just as the gyros began to spin. The Conduit rattled and moaned and sounded like it would crack in half and finally ground to a halt.

Prakvar scooted himself up and out of his workspace and limped over to the main control panel.

“ _Why_ did we abort that attempt, Doctor Prakvar?” Shalteen demanded.

“I was not getting proper feedback…” Prakvar was panting heavily, “From the eezo array…”

“We _knew_ we would not be getting full feedback!” Shalteen raged, “We discussed this, did we not?”

“Perhaps the batteries from the surface artillery aren’t—“

“No!” Shalteen and Prakvar shouted at once.

“I was not getting anywhere _near_ the feedback I should have been getting with the amount of power supplied!” Prakvar coughed.

“How little?”

“Fifteen percent.”

The string of cusses that issued from Shalteen’s mouth was truly impressive, even by Rukosh’s lofty standards.

“What is the trouble?” he asked, casting out a surge of calm questioning to settle the auras around him.

“Before the station went dark,” Prakvar wheezed. “We never had time to connect Vigil to the Conduit controls—it is independent of Vigil’s systems.”

“Wise,” Rukosh nodded.

“But it is also powered separately than the rest of the station, as a result,” Shalteen inspected a burn on the back of her hand. “The amount of power required to operate the Conduit means that we have, in total, about…” she looked at Prakvar, “Three? Four minutes where we can have it active. Total. Every thirty second test means less time to get through the gate once we have it operational. It means we have to be _very_ precise with each test so we do not waste our time.”

“If we connect it to the rest of the facility?”

“That would add… not much time,” Prakvar’s breathing had finally returned to normal. “Vigil would not have begun deactivating stasis pods if we were not on our very last energy reserves.”

“Then we connect the machine to the inusannon terraforming engine,” Rukosh said, simply. The two Conduit specialists looked at him in disbelief.

“But… the terraforming halls are encrypted…”

“ _I_ encrypted them.” Rukosh could feel the dawning shock radiating off the two. But not off Jinspar, who stood nearby silently watching, the same giddy energy in his aura.

“It is a _very_ sophisticated encryption…” Prakvar grumbled. Rukosh raised a brow and Shalteen was quick to cut in.

“—good, this is a start. Are they even compatible, though?”

“Presumably,” Rukosh ignored the wave of… envy? That came from Prakvar. “Ksad used to talk about the potential of the station if Vigil were allowed to siphon power directly from the terraforming reactor. Enough to power the facility through to the end of the next cycle.”

“You might have mentioned this before!” Prakvar wiped a hand down his face.

“What good would it have done?”

“None. None at all,” Shalteen smiled, still trying to smooth things over. “But now that we know, this could be a start.”

“If Doctor Ksad knew the reactor could be used to power the facility…” Jinspar said softly, “It could have kept all the stasis pods operable… no one would have had to die…”

A hush fell over the four of them.

“The… terraforming engine,” Shalteen said, and Rukosh could see in her eyes that she was putting the solution together. “Siphoning that much power from the reactor would cause massive changes to the climate of the planet, the Reapers would pick up the changes when they scanned through the system. They would find this facility…?”

She looked to Rukosh and the General nodded solemnly.

“A difficult choice,” Rukosh’s throat was dry. “But, as head of the facility, one that was Ksad’s to make.” Rukosh wondered sometimes if Ksad had deprioritized his own survival specifically as penance for the people he knew might die if his calculations had been wrong…

“Well,” Jinspar rubbed his palms together. “Sounds like an adventure!”

 

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

Static streamed from Kaidan’s skin, his punch at the divider shaking the whole skycar.

The volus in the front screamed.

“Dammit!” Kadain grunted, still glowing blue. “I could blow us out of here, but it’d crash the whole damn car!”

Shepard had been trying to get some kind of signal through since they’d lifted off, but every comm signal was being blocked.

“Fine with me.”

“Not funny, Shepard!”

“I’m just saying,” Shepard looked up from his omni-tool. “We’ve been through worse. Blow this thing up.”

“I’m _not_ crashing a skycar with you on-board!”

“It’d be like old times…”

“Too _much_ like old times,” Kaidan punched the glass again, the car rocked. “This is _not_ ,” Punch. “the _Mako,”_ Punch. “We are _not_ ,” Punch. “on a _mission.”_

The divider cracked, and biotic static crackled against Kaidan’s teeth when he grinned.

“Please stop! You’ll kill me!” the volus begged over the comms.

“Do you know who you’re kidnapping?” Kaidan shouted, like he would shout straight through the crack instead of through the comms. “Two _Spectres_? You know what that means?”

The comms had been shut down, but they could tell the volus definitely knew what that meant from the way he squirmed in his seat.

“Who the hell would try to kidnap _us_? And _now?_ ” Kaidan rubbed his sore knuckles.

“Anyone who lost someone on the Citadel, really,” Shepard said softly.

“Hey now,” Kaidan’s biotics evaporated, “Don’t start thinking like—“

The car pitched down suddenly, screaming in for a landing as quickly as it could.

The instant the hatch had popped, Kaidan flew out of the car and had the volus caught up in the air with his biotics.

“ _Who_ sent you?” Kaidan roared.

“Major! That will be unnecessary!” came an affable voice from over his shoulder. Shepard scrambled out of the car to step between Kaidan and the stranger. He was a salarian, older, if Shepard had learned to recognize such things. He walked with a kind of a hop that seemed to be an adaptation of a very old limp, up on the balls of his feet as if he were a dancer. The gray markings around his eyes were prominent, which made his smile and eyes look comically large. “I am the one who hired Pitok to collect you!”

“And you are?”

“Spectre Col Vedirus,” the salarian bowed quaintly, “Head of Citadel Special Projects.”

“ _Spectre_?” Kaidan set the volus down, who tottered over to hide behind Col Vedirus.

“Yes, indeed! It’s a pleasure to meet the both of you—here, Pitok, for your trouble. Yes, goodbye. Don’t worry, we’ll discuss repairs later. Yes. I’ll contact you. Yes, Pitok, you know I will. Yes, goodbye.”

Shepard watched the volus leap back into his rickety skycar and jet away.

“So just what the hell do you think you were doing?” Kaidan was seething, but Shepard could tell he was already calming down: not knowing was the greatest annoyance in Kaidan’s life. Once he knew he was up against, nothing could rattle him. It made Shepard smile to see him like this.

“There are so few Spectre meet-and-greet luncheons, I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of me.” He gestured the two of them inside and led the way. “But as head of Citadel Special Projects, my latest assignment concerns the two of you.”

“What does that mean?” Shepard asked, following the Spectre onto a large elevator.

“No one knows where you went when you took the beacon from London to the Citadel, nor where you had your alleged encounter with the Reaper controlling intelligence,” he entered a complicated sequence into the lift and it moved sideways. Shepard could tell Kaidan was bristling at the word ‘alleged’. “As Spectres, we are authorized to use any means necessary to complete our mission. I always wondered if that would extend to abducting other Spectres…” He laughed to himself.

“Yuk it up,” Kaidan narrowed his eyes.

“Well, actually,” Col Vedirus made a dismissive wave at Kaidan’s fury. “I _did_ want to question you, Commander Shepard—and I figured there was no use in trying to separate the two of you. _Death_ couldn’t do that, what chance do I? Very romantic. No, actually, I have a feeling you’ll be quite useful, Major.”

“For _what_?” Kaidan stepped forward, “What does any of this have to do with seizing us against our will?”

“Had to,” Col chuckled, “The Council has been watching you all day. Spectres, CSEC. Thought just because you requested no escort that they wouldn’t be watching you? No. They’re still not sure the Citadel won’t react to you presence, Commander Shepard.”

“Which is why they assigned you to find out… where I was? What I did?”

“Yes,” Col nodded. “But I had to spirit you away from prying eyes. Pitok’s a nervous one. Can’t remember a script to save his life. But a damn good agent. Assured of not being followed. Get you off the grid for a few hours.”

“Why?”

“Because, Commander, my mission is to find out where you were and what you did aboard the Crucible. But this is a mission I have no _interest_ in accomplishing.” The doors to the lift opened, and Kaidan and Shepard found themselves staring at the expansive interior of the Citadel Archives. “We’ve got ‘bigger fish to fry,’ as your kind say!”

 

++

 

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh completed the lengthy sequence which would disable the alarms and locks, and the monolithic doors to the inusannon terraforming halls began to swing open. Jinspar and the three Juniors selected to assist Rhavka with integrating the ancient power plant with Vigil’s systems stared, abject wonder streaming out of their auras to see the inside of this long-forbidden chamber.

Rhavka’s aura, however, was dull, her eyelids tired. She glanced at the general and gave her shoulders a shrug. So Rukosh led on. The Juniors hoisted the provisions and practically tittered checking the straps over their shoulders—it would take several days to link the systems, and fortunately, Rhavka had only nodded when Rukosh told her coming back to main complex to sleep would not be feasible. She was less likely to argue with his assessments than the other scientists.

“Is it really necessary to have a weapon, General Rukosh?” Jinspar asked, not reproachful, but full of the usual awe. Nothing could be alive, here, but if they were to get the Conduit working, Doctor Rhavka and this team were crucial to their success. So the general was prepared to defend them with every power at his disposal. But Rukosh didn’t bother responding, and soon the researchers became preoccupied taking in the hall.

The great stone halls were as tall as the central chamber through the mountain, the same eerie light filtering from above. The air here was dry, and no moss or vines clung to the walls the way they did to the failed cryo pods in the rest of the complex. Either wall was lined with enormous pillars of monitoring servos. They looked so alien Rukosh would not have known what they were if Ksad had not told him when they first explored this part of the complex together. Ksad had stared much as Jinspar and the Juniors were now, but Rukosh had felt in his aura a sort of satisfaction in the inevitability of discovery and a reverence for the place.

The main section of the terraforming halls was a great central chamber, pipes and thick wiring and power-interchangers flashing up and down an enormous pit that seemed to go down forever. Various ladders and flimsy stairs wound about the interior.

“We must climb to the bottom,” Rukosh said behind him.

“Of course,” Rhavka sighed, then let out a yawn. “And then climb our way out, as well.”

Other than the mapping team of the first Ilos colony, Rukosh and Ksad were the first Protheans to step foot in this part of the ruins till today. Ksad had canceled his appointments and duties for four whole days when Rukosh first unlocked these halls. They’d ‘explored’—as his mate put it—and camped as if the depths of the inusannon terraforming halls were a natural cave system perfect for a spelunking expedition.

“Can we float to the bottom?” Jinspar asked, his biotics flickering to life in green crackles around his skin.

“No.” Rukosh began to climb down the nearest ladder and did not stop to see if anyone was following.

It took them hours to reach the absolute floor of the terraforming engine: catwalks across the great abyss, staircases that plunged down the outer wall, ladders meant for smaller hands than a Prothean’s, their descent illuminated only by the glow of the power-interchangers. And all the way down, halls branched off in every direction as tall and as wide as the hall they had entered through, the orange tinge of light a welcome sight each time.

The actual power reactor sank as far below the floor of the terraforming chamber and the chamber itself sank below the main complex, but Rhavka identified the terminals she would need almost immediately and set to work setting up lighting rigs. Rukosh and one of the Juniors began establishing the camp in a corner apart from the work.

After some time, Rukosh approached the signal specialist, now up to her elbows in alien wiring.

“You will be able to adapt this reactor to Vigil’s systems?”

Digging about, she merely nodded. Rukosh smiled, and the amusement he allowed to show in his aura surprised the scientist looked up, startled.

“Uh, yes.” She glanced around Rukosh’s body to see if any of the Juniors helping with the process were about, then sighed. “I have been studying inusannon diagrams for the last week to prepare for this. I am certain I can do it, but… it is not my usual sort of task.”

“Doctor Shalteen seemed confident in your abilities.”

“Shalteen knows me to be a quick learner, that is all.” Rhavka’s voice was a quiet hush almost lost in the unnatural throb of the reactor below their feet. “And I have the most free time—other than Doctor Jinspar. I will not be able to program what I need to program into the Conduit systems until I have a free source of power. Finding the Cotoxi relay is going to take some time.”

At last she located a single strand of superconductive and crimped it. Her aura wore her satisfaction close to her skin, and Rukosh liked that about her.

“How long will this reactor allow us to power the Conduit?”

Rhavka stood up and rubbed her hands together, hoisting herself up out of the mess she was surrounded in.

“Gajik!” She shouted down the corridor to one of the Juniors, “Increase tolerance by 7%, and tell Jinspar he needs to locate the node in the next twenty.” Her voice was quiet even when she shouted, but the team she’d assembled seem to have a certain degree of simpatico and the Junior understood even still. She turned back to Rukosh, as if startled he was still there, “Hmm? What? Sorry, I was preoccupied.”

“The reactor. How long will it power the Conduit.”

“Oh, yes.”  She very nearly chuckled, but her amusement was held as close as her self-satisfaction. “Centuries. Once I give Vigil control of this reactor, he can power the entire facility for millennia, and once Shalteen gives him control of the Conduit controls, he—“

“’It,’” Rukosh grunted. “Vigil is a VI, an ‘it.’”

“Easier for me to call Vigil ‘he,’” she responded, “But I will ask him what he prefers the next time I see him.”

“You would ask its permission?”

“Why not? Most of my friends are dead and Vigil is competent and kind.” Rhavka double-checked some figures on her data-pad, “Might as well treat him as a team member, at least. His personality imprint is… very advanced,” here, she watched Rukosh cautiously, “It is comforting.”

Rukosh didn’t respond, and the Doctor returned to her work.

 

++

**Commander Shepard**

“Last time I was in here,” Shepard’s voice drifted out among the scaffoldings and storage vaults of the archive, “I was chasing my evil clone.”

“Mmm, yes. Quite the mess that was to clean-up,” Col Vedirus nodded. “Kidding, damage was undone quite simply.”

“So why is it you don’t want the Council to know what we’re doing down here?” Kaidan asked, always keeping himself between Shepard and Col.

“Oh we just need some peace and quiet is all,” Col laughed, ushering them onto a tramway. “There’s a project I undertook some years ago that I mean to finish.”

A few moments later, the tram stopped, and when they were escorted through a vault-door in the wall, they stood in front of an impressive collection of artifacts.

Shepard could feel it before he could see it…

And there, in the center of them all, was a Prothean beacon.

“Welcome! Major! Commander!” Col gestured wide, “Fifty thousand years of Prothean artifacts! And the only person in the galaxy who can interface with them,” he laid a hand gently on Shepard’s shoulder. “Is you, Commander.”

 

++

 

**General Rukosh**

Three days later and the work was nearly complete, and Rukosh had learned to deftly reroute certain key subroutines which would allow Vigil to interface with the alien technology. The work was welcome: Rhavka had explained to him easily enough what needed to be done, and seemed grateful for the extra help with such a small team at her disposal. Rukosh and Rhavka both took their meals to where they were working, and worked until the very minute they went to their cots to sleep. Jinspar had made great friends with the three Juniors, and at meal times would sit with them in the glow of one of the lighting rigs and laugh and talk. Jinspar was eager to learn, though slow. But for the first time, Rukosh could see exactly why these Juniors had been placed so high on the reserve priority: the Senior researchers were all accomplished geniuses and intimidatingly educated.

But each of these young Junior researchers had an intuition, they made leaps in their tasks that had not been explained to them which their elders could not figure out. They worked quickly, deftly performing their tasks when even the most seasoned doctor would be confounded. They followed orders they were given precisely, but when they had occasion to ask a question or to challenge what they were supposed to be doing, it always provided a perspective the Seniors never would have considered. These were exactly the sort of qualities Ksad prized most, and Rukosh found himself wondering once again exactly what—preference or expertise—his mate had favored in this plan.

No one but Ksad had ever engaged Rukosh in pursuits outside the military. Helping Ksad with some triviality about his work—a line of code here or there, or designing a sorting algorithm so Ksad could cross that off his to-do list the next day—made him feel closer to his mate. If he was honest, though, it also put Ksad at a loss at how to repay him: it wasn’t as if Ksad could assist Rukosh with his troop deployments or strategies, no matter how much a master planner he was. The old general found the fluster it put into Ksad’s aura incredibly endearing.

“General,” Rhavka knelt before where Rukosh sat at his work, “We found a beacon in the corridor. Would you please come and take a look?”

Sure enough, it was a Prothean data beacon. Rhavka had sent Jinspar and the other Juniors to continue reinforcing the mains.

“And no one has activated it?” Rukosh asked.

“No, I reminded everyone of the no-linking policy. I think I can adjust the information for visual display—I was hoping to find something like this, actually. It should give me the information I need on the reactor output, and I hope it will give me some insight on the interchangers left behind by somebody who actually _specialized_ in this sort of thing. I wanted to make sure you were here when I activated it though…”

Rukosh could feel the gentlest tug of uncertainty in her aura, not fear, but a sense of emotional reservation. Ultimately, there was no reason Rukosh should have to be present—satisfied as he was that she was following his protocols. She was either being overly cautious, or…

“Alright.”

Rhavka set to work, programming from memory the code which would interpret the experiential data stored on the beacon into audio-visual signals.

“General,” she asked quietly, not looking up from her work. “Before, Doctor Jinspar mentioned that you were named an Avatar of the Prothean People…”

“Yes,” Rukosh responded. Rhavka turned to look at him, no doubt expecting him to tell which quality he represented. He did not.

“We are certainly fortunate to have you with us, then,” she said at last. “The way you spoke about the Ascension Fleet, it does not seem like the sort of place where the Empire seems to be looking for paragons of Prothean values.”

“Many saw it as a political move, which of course it was, but not the sort most imagined.”

“And what had they imagined?”

“Naming an Avatar from the Ascension Fleet showed solidarity with the greater prothean empire, at a time where our forced were being crushed and our holdings were in disarray.”

“And why _did_ they name you an Avatar, then?”

Rukosh closed his eyes.

“The _zha_ had been part of the Prothean empire for a millennium. They were never defeated, never fought when our vanguard arrived. They joined willingly, and kept to their own system, paid their tribute. They were geniuses with synthetic technology, creating artificial intelligences which could integrate with their own bodies.

“When the Reapers invaded, it was nothing for them to take control of the synthetic _zha’til_. Every member of the _zha_ species had these synthetics embedded in them from conception. Every last man, woman, and child on their world was enslaved to the Reapers completely. The _zha’til_ transformed their bodies into hideous abominations, and the _zha_ were gone. There was only the synthetic _zha’til_.

“They swarmed our troops. Blacked out the sky. The synthetics could join together into massive creatures impervious to any weaponry. In space, they moved like a swarm of gnats, the clouded around our ships—a billion dancing lights—and then the ship was gone. The replicated as quickly as their environment could bear. The Reapers were moving them  off-world, and they were decimating our fleets in the core. A swarm of them protected the Citadel—our attempt to retake it early in the war was foiled: they devoured our fleet the moment they exited the Relay.”

“I… never heard of them,” Rhavka said, trying not to look up at Rukosh. “And you…?”

“I collapsed the star of the _zha_ home system,” he looked at her impassively. “Killed everything in the system, including several of my own ships. Isolated pockets of _zha’til_ remained and could continue to fight for the Reapers, but even so, I had taken away the Reapers’ most powerful weapon in the war against our galaxy.”

“I can see… why they would want to honor you for that,” she nodded.

“Politics,” Rukosh responded, thickly. “They were grateful for how a member of the Ascension Fleet had aided the core. But naming me Avatar also made a point: General Rukosh, who had defied orders to stay and defend the outer prothean holdings time and again, had finally acknowledged that the highest cause was to defend the Empire’s core. And it sent a message to our subjugated holdings: you have more to fear from betraying the Empire than you do from the Reapers.”

“What did you do?”

“Ksad asked me to be the chief of security here,” Rukosh said. “I could choose any assignment in the Empire. I will always choose Ksad.”

She didn’t respond, and it took her only a few more moments to interpolate the data, and the beacon hummed gently, a holographic Prothean taking shape… at the same time, a voice began to speak: a slow, measured _pavik_ accent…

There was an instant where Rukosh let himself believe a holographic message from his mate, his Ksad, was about to appear before him. But no, when the voice and image resolved itself, it was a stranger.

_“Greetings, I am Shiqur, Chief of the Ilos Colonial Expeditionary Engineering Corps. This will serve as a survey of the inusannon power grid and reactor system…”_

A man who died centuries before the Reapers had ever invaded. The hope had welled just high enough in Rukosh that he felt it collapse on itself like a wave.

“This is what you were hoping to find?” He asked quietly.

“Yes,” Rhavka’s voice was even quieter than usual, aura thick with disappointment even as the hologram began disgorging huge quantities of data meant to be absorbed through a physio-psychic link. “This will certainly help me.”

“You will want to link with it.”

“I will.”

“Very well. We’ll take it back to the surface with us.”

“Is it safe?” she whispered.

“Yes. Ksad and I had scanned this whole chamber for beacons. If we did not detect it from our _camp_ , then the interference from the reactor means it has been out of sync with any other beacons since it was placed.”

She turned off the stream of information, and the two stood, staring.

“I had hoped it was a message from Doctor Ksad.”

“Why is that?”

“I miss him,” she said simply. “He was always very kind, and did not have to be. I have been working for him since I graduated. After a guest lecture he gave in a symposium I had organized.”

“’On the Breakdown of Uncertainty Observations in Near-Massless Corridors,’” Rukosh recited, dully.

“Yes,” Rhavka turned, surprised. “How did you know?”

The symposium had come up suddenly, and Ksad had had to cancel their week together on Porflorous Beach in order to attend. He did not answer, though, and Rhavka continued.

“He was a genius, and a good man. And such a gamester, yes? Always thinking two and three steps ahead. I did not know he had been down in these halls, but I would not have been at all surprised to find a beacon he had left. I almost wondered if it address me directly, tell me exactly how to finish this damn interface job.” Rukosh had never heard the quiet researcher speak so passionately.

“Hmm.” Still, his aura showed nothing, not for all the vulnerability projected in Rhavka’s own.

“I think to see him again would be comforting. Even if it were just a power-grid schematic. Is that a silly thought?”

Rukosh stared at the beacon. To see Ksad again.

“No, it is not.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mausoleums

**Commander Shepard**

It was the first Prothean beacon he’d seen since Thessia, and the tug of it inside him brought back memories…

“Shepard,” Kaidan’s fingers seized around his arm. “Is this okay? We can turn right around and walk out of here.”

“It’s fine, Kaidan,” Shepard swallowed. But Kaidan stepped between him and the beacon.

“Don’t play the hero, now.” His brows were furrowed over his eyes in a way Shepard hadn’t seen in a long time. The placid Kaidan, his lover who put on a smiling face no matter how bad the news was on Shepard’s recovery, was gone from that worried expression. Why now, of all things? Some crazy salarian Spectre wanted to show him a few Prothean trinkets, why should it bother Kaidan more than the tests and the set-backs and the therapy and… the Reapers themselves?

“It’s just a beacon, it’s no problem.”

But that was a bit of a lie. That tug in Shepard’s mind was impossible to divorce from the moments that always came after. A flash, a scream, boiling organic creatures, gaping mouths. The sound of Collectors storming Javik’s refuge center, slaughtering hundreds of thousands. Kai Leng’s taunting laugh as he stole the Catalyst from Shepard’s hand and betrayed Earth to the Reapers.

“It’s an incredible find,” Col Vedirus stood apart, softly regarding the two. “Been in these archives for decades. It’s only been in the last few weeks I’ve gotten it to activate.”

“Shepard,” Kaidan urged in a low whisper, stopping Shepard from stepping forward. “I love you. You don’t… you’re worth more to this world than what people think they can get out of you. You’re worth more to me. Be careful.”

“Wh-what?” Shepard looked up, but the anger was dissolving from Kaidan’s eyes, left only with a resolute understanding.

“You feel weak, you feel… separate. From me. From everything, right now. But that doesn’t mean you have to do _anything_ that makes you uncomfortable, just to prove you’re still ‘useful.’”

“I don’t feel uncomfortable.”

A blatant lie. When had he learned to lie to his lover so effortlessly?

The morning he woke up and realized the pain would never go away, and he knew that Kaidan would never go away either. And so the pain would be Kaidan’s, too. _That_ was the morning.

He had tried to shut Kaidan out of that pain. Had he succeeded? The look in Kaidan’s eyes said ‘no.’

“The largest collection of Prothean artifacts in the galaxy. Though who knows what they’re hiding on Thessia.” Col stepped forward, laid a hand on the beacon. “It’s been my little side-project for as long as I’ve headed the CSP.”

“So,” Kaidan turned, smoothed his shirt. “What are we doing here?”

Shepard knew that if he walked only a few steps forward, the beacon would download into his mind. Kaidan seemed to remember this too, and stayed between him and the beacon.

“I hope you will believe me when I say that I thought you might honestly appreciate all this,” he said with a grin. “No one in the universe are better accidental archaeologists of Prothean technology than the two of _you_.”

“Dr. T’soni,” Kaidan said, dryly.

“ _Much_ harder to get hold of,” the salarian chuckled. “When you defeated the Reapers, interest in these old Prothean artifacts fell away.” He walked over to a table full of other devices. “A shame, really. They may not have any more useful information on battling the Reapers, but how much history is still in these old physio-psychic devices?”

He pushed a switch and a swirling ball of energy materialized into the hologram of a stern looking Prothean.

“Is that… the Vengeance VI?” Kaidan kept a respectable distance.

“No,” Col shook his head, “Though I applaud your memory. That VI is currently… elsewhere. This, however, is a portrait of its creator: Pashik Vran. You’ve heard his voice in the VI, learned a little about his personality, too, I’ll warrant.”

The brightness and the swirling static within the hologram hurt Shepard’s eyes. And the longer he stared, the sadder he became.

“Have you learned much about them?” he asked, “The Protheans?”

“Not as much as we’d like to,” Col answered quietly. “A little about their social hierarchy the archaeologists never published in their journals. A little about their families.”

“Families?”

“Yes,” Col joined Shepard in front of the image of Pashik Vran.

“Based on the state of the galaxy at the time Vengeance was created,” Kaidan said darkly, “I doubt you’ll find many ‘Vrans’ in the history book. Seems like he lived… pretty close to the end.”

“He did,” Col confirmed, “Though we wouldn’t have found many ‘Vrans’ besides. For a species able to communicate their entire history through a single touch, surnames to trace origin are unnecessary. A simplicity my own race could learn. No. Not every Prothean has two names, only those with mates.”

“Mates?” Shepard asked softly.

“Yes. When two Protheans were joined, they chose a new name between them. A name which represented the core of their commitment to one another.” Col looked away, “Their birth name represented who they were as individual entities, the second name who they had become as life-partners. So, our friend Pashik Vran. We know he lived near the end. We know he was loved. We know he was one half of a whole.”

 

++

 

**General Rukosh**

Vigil now had access to the full power of the inusannon terraforming engine. Juniors were still running huge cables up and down the corridors that led to the computer’s power system, and the Conduit control had been fully integrated with the VI’s systems.

The complex was brighter, the arguments were fewer with more work to do, and every day the Protheans felt they were closer to activating the Conduit. The beacon they had brought up from the reactor was being retrofitted to send out a signal to any beacons still active in the galaxy—only to send, and not to receive any message in return.

When the work that had to be done surpassed his understanding or ability to help with, the old soldier wandered off alone into his quarters. The blaze of the fires outside, the way the message down below had cheated him out of seeing his beloved, pulled at the general from his core.

“Vigil,” Rukosh said, as softly as he could. Everything echoed in these giant halls, in the lonely barracks hastily added in to some ancient stone room. He didn’t want the words to echo, he wanted them to be swallowed up before they even reached his comms. “Are you there?”

There was a long silence.

“I am always here, General.”

Vigil’s voice, the unique _pavak_ accent he wore better than Prakvar or Rhavka or Jinspar. The dry, automated tone. Carefully kind and frustratingly calm.

“Tell me where I can find his body.”

Another long silence.

“Doctor Ksad is still in his cryo-pod…”

“I know,” Rukosh didn’t want the machine to speak more than it had to, and he resented every superfluous word. He wondered if the machine knew this. “Tell me which pod.”

“I will send you a tram—“

“No. Just tell me where it is.”

It was far away, and Rukosh didn’t take any tram. A good 4 kilometers down into the mountain, and he walked the distance, wading through the stream that poured through the corridor down to the Conduit site.

He had expected Ksad to be sleeping—and now entombed—in Vigil’s chamber itself, with the rest of the scientists who had actually been awakened. All the rest of the department heads were housed there. He had dreaded seeing his lover’s body with the VI watching him. Even though Vigil could sense everything that happened within the complex, there was something more sinister about it being in the same room.  

But Ksad had stationed his pod far from the central chamber. Like Rukosh’s own pod. Vigil’s coordinates indicated that Ksad was high up: near the ceiling of the central corridor. He saw now why Vigil had offered the hover tram.  

He began climbing the stone wall.

Over closed pods full of corpses.

Over the pods which had auto-ejected, only bones within.

Up to his lover, entombed high above a nameless hallway with the service personnel.

Rukosh’s arms ached by the time he reached the pod. In his youth, such a climb would not have fazed him at all. Now he felt truly old. Only the stream down below gave the giant corridor any sense of its true scale, now just a thin trickle on the floor. He had to put both feet against the wall to try to pry the pod away from the wall, and almost slipped several times: holding on only by his fingertips wedged into the lip where the tube sealed.

Finally, he used a warp field to crack the seal itself. Panic surged through him, he wanted to see his beloved once more. There was something he needed to find, but was he not desecrating a grave?

The pod hissed, a rush of musty air streaming out of the cracks he had made in the seal. It only took a gentle tug now to pull the tube away.

With trembling hands, he pulled himself up on top of the pod, his worn-out muscles sagging as he caught his breath.

The pod was closed, the window inside fogged.

But he could feel Ksad.

He recognized the imprint of him on the pod like the faintest scent of fire on the wind. Barely there, and yet utterly distinct. The sound of his laughter in a crowded room.

Except there was only the sound of dripping water. And the imprint was centuries old. And his love was dead inside the pod.

“Ishan, forgive me,” he whispered, pressing his palms harder into the metal, trying to absorb all Ksad’s final emotions out of the broken machine. But every imprint was the spark that set off a fire inside him: Ksad was anxious as he entered the pod—he was anxious when they were joined, because he was tired of telling people how we had met; Ksad felt a sense of relief as the stasis activated—he felt relief when Rukosh returned from Komsio N’ar.

But when Ksad died, he had died in stasis, not even dreams to leave an imprint.

It didn’t feel like a death bed. Or a grave.

But it was both.

All the memories so old, so faded. Rukosh expected to open the pod and find it empty—that Ksad was dead he could accept, but his love must have escaped this pod centuries ago. Lived a full life even without Rukosh. Died in peace far away from the cares of the Reapers.

He wasn’t going to be inside this pod.

Rukosh opened the stasis tube, and the control he’d been keeping over his emotions slipped, bleeding a cold sorrow over the faded imprints.

There was Ksad, one arm crossed over his belly, the way he slept at Imerion before Ilos, before the Reapers. When it was only the two of them. His face was desiccated, practically mummified over the centuries. The eyelids still closed and sagging over empty sockets, carapace cracked and disintegrating. He looked hardly like himself at all, but strangely serene despite his sunken cheeks and bony fingers.

Rukosh wanted to touch his face, but the body looked as if it might crumble at the slightest touch.

“Oh Ishan,” he whispered. It still sounded too loud. “I am so sorry.”

Sorry, in the end, that it was his Ksad lying here instead of himself. He did not want to live this way, not for the glory of the empire the other scientists wanted to restore, not for the continuation of his species. He did not even want to live for Ksad’s memory, and for that, he was most sorry. He did not want to live at all without Ksad by his side.

He stared a long time, reaching out to see if he could feel Ksad’s aura deep within his corpse. But there was nothing. In his hands, held over his heart, Ksad had a small echo shard. Rukosh knew he would not have entered the stasis pod without it. Ksad had it forged when they had first become involved, it had been his most prized possession; so now it was Rukosh’s. He carefully lifted the cold hand to retrieve it.

At once, the shard flared in his fingers, sending a surge of energy through him, trying to download its data to his memory, forcing everything it had seen into his conscious. It was all he could do not to lose himself in the experience—it was Ksad’s Echo Shard, after all. But his grief won out, the strength of his resolve canceling out the reaction. The effort of ignoring it made him dizzy, the vertigo of the chamber calling to him like the imprints stored within the shard. When he slipped it into his armor, it seemed to burn against his skin. It would be his punishment, resisting the blaze of the echo shard constantly threatening and tempting him with the memories he longed to see would keep him focused on his duty. He would flog himself with his grief until his work was done. The energy it required already made him weary, but he would not relent.

Though it didn’t feel like Ksad, Rukosh could barely let go of his hand. When he slowly lowered it back to his mate’s chest, he released the breath he had been holding since he first felt the surge of the echo shard.

“Goodbye, my love. My Ishan.” He closed his eyes, and said the words to his memory of his lover’s living face—resisting the pull of the echo shard to call up the memory as if Ksad were here with him now. “I will join you. And soon.”

In a glow of green, his activated his biotics and slipped from the pod, floating down to the floor of the chamber. He wondered if Ksad had been viewing the echo shard when his stasis pod activated. He hoped he had been there for his mate, at the end, if only a memory.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard lends his help to pass on the Prothean codex in his mind, the Prothean survivors send a message.

**Commander Shepard**

“You know a lot about the Protheans,” Shepard said, mouth dry, turning away from the hologram of the long dead scientist. Something had happened inside him. He knew, of course, that the Protheans has had lives and loves and generations of pride and hope behind them. As a soldier, you had to know the stakes of the civilians you were sworn to protect. It was drilled into them constantly, and Shepard had given enough wartime speeches to know the recipe by heart.

He had known it, but Kaidan had _taught_ him the truth of it. Not the way a battle-commander had taught him that tech-attacks could ignite flaming enemies. More like being ‘taught’ to hold a hand when someone slips theirs into yours: trust, open, and you’re doing it. That was the man he loved, and that was how Shepard learned from him, as sure as if Kaidan were a beacon of his own that downloaded the truth straight into Shepard’s brain.

And the truth Kaidan lived by above all else? Help them. The women. The children. Give them a future. A great purpose that enfolded and held Shepard steady.

Today was like that again. The tragedy of the fallen Prothean empire was a tragedy of trillions of individual lives—he knew this. And yet, to hear their names. To know what their names meant. They had fallen to the cycle, and he had ended the cycle. It humanized Pashik Vran, but it further alienated Shepard from his own concept of what it meant to be alive. Someone had called him ‘Vran,’ and he had whispered it in return. He had loved like that. Loved like Shepard was supposed to love Kaidan…

“Not as much as you could,” Col Vedirus crossed his arms, a little spring in his posture bringing him to the balls of his feet. "You have more experience reading original Prothean 'texts' as anyone. Aside from beacons like these, there are a number of physio-psychic interfaces I’ve managed to bring online. Personal data, journal entries, sales records—“

“What does it make you feel,” Kaidan’s voice was low and dark, a voice Shepard feared because it meant his universe was in disarray. “Looking at these all day, trying to get… what? Exactly? Out of them? Archaeology I get… but this? This feels like grave robbing.”

“It is,” Col shrugged, “Graves are what we have, Major Alenko. We had warnings—but the Prothean people were more than this, hmm?”

“I don’t think I’d want somebody just… going through my diary after I was dead.”

“Why not?” Shepard said lightly. Kaidan looked at him, momentarily fazed.

“What?”

“Why not? Wouldn’t you want people to know how you thought? And why you did what you did?”

“I hope my actions speak for themselves, if they’re remembered at all,” Kaidan murmured.

“Well then,” Col clapped his hands together. “Let’s find some ‘actions’ time forgot but _these_ remembered, shall we?”

He looked between the two consternated faces and whirled on his heel to search for something at a counter on the other side of the room.

“Kaidan,” Shepard limped close, leaned in to whisper. Kaidan took it as an invitation to wrap his arm around Shepard’s hip and pull him close. “What’s the matter? You never talked to Liara like this, never showed any sign of this on Ilos, or Feros.”

“It’s different, to me. Don’t… don’t you think?” His eyes were pleading, but Shepard didn’t know for what. Understanding, probably, but Shepard didn’t. “They were exterminated, all of them. We don’t need to look at their _bank_ records to know their sacrifice, or why they were great. _We’re_ here. And… what are we getting out of this? On Ilos, we were fighting for our lives, Shepard. Are we just satisfying our curiosity, here?”

Shepard frowned.

“Learning as much as possible about the people who came before us,” he said softly, watching Col cross the room back to the pair. “That’s archaeology, Kaidan.”

Kaidan took his arm and turned him around just as Col came near.

“Well, there’s that, still doesn’t it feel… Just… okay, I’m worried about you, Shepard,” he hissed. “You don’t need somebody poking around in there. Not with how far you’ve come…”

“I’m going to be fine, Kaidan.” He knew it sounded robotic, but he didn’t frown, didn’t speak up. Just turned back to Col Vedirus. The Spectre had been watching from an uncomfortably close distance.

“Commander, the Codex in your mind,” he said, simply. No masks between them. “I believe I can isolate it and adapt it for the use of historians everywhere.”

“To study these relics?”

“Yes. And thousands more like them.”

“What do you need me to do?”

How many times had he asked that, thinking he was about to die. There was no need to be melodramatic with this, though. The salarian’s test would be painful because _everything_ was painful lately. But it wasn’t dangerous. It wouldn’t traumatize. He couldn’t be traumatized like… real people.

“Wear these,” Col indicated a pair of diodes, mimed that they were attached to the temples, then pointed to the beacon. “And touch that.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“I’ve spent the better part of my life ensuring simplicity, Commander,” Col smiled wearily.

“Last time a beacon liked that knocked you out for _days_!” Kaidan urged. “You never come across this stuff where it doesn’t knock you flat!”

“True, those are risks.” Col nodded.

“I’m not getting any younger.”

“Shepard,” Kaidan’s voice turned Shepard around, already sticking the diodes to his head. Kaidan stepped up till they were nose to nose, the irregular exchange of breaths making them both sound more nervous than they meant to show. “I love you. I don’t want to see you hurt ever again. Tell me you’ll let me be there for you after this little bungee jump you’re putting yourself through and I won’t worry.”

Bungee Jump. Cheap adrenaline kick. Kaidan couldn’t be more wrong. If anything, Shepard needed a cheap kick of service, of duty. He didn’t need adrenaline.

To serve. To be useful. That was his humanity, and his adrenaline. Kaidan knew that. Damn.

“I always want you with me,” Shepard’s voice quaked the way his heart didn’t, and it surprised him. As if his mouth had transformed the hollowness of the words into truth he hadn’t learned to accept. Kaidan’s truth: a future. “I need you here.”

Kaidan nodded.

Col simply held a hand out to the beacon.

“What will I see?”

“No way of knowing,” Col actually sounded assuaging. “Probably the Ilos warning, but who can say? They are such intricate devices. Hopefully with the information from your brain, we’ll learn more about them.”

He stepped away, turning his back to the tableau: Shepard before the beacon, again. The ghost-blue light of the archive compartment wreathing round the two like old fencing companions. Shepard felt the beacon was almost like a living thing.

He reached out a hand.

 

++

 

**General Rukosh**

It was the first time Rukosh had not been the first to a meeting with the research team.

The others were all scattered about the laboratory, watching the tall beacon as if it were an idol about to grant a boon. For the first time, he reflected on how disheveled they all looked, months and months of constant work, little sleep, and military rations had left all of them looking lean, an edge to their features that had not been present when they’d all awoken.

It was the trace of exhaustion and the wear of time Rukosh had seen come over so many soldiers serving under him over the years. For Ksad’s sake, he was sorry to see the gaunt expressions and determined eyes on civilians. At last, they looked like survivors.

“General,” Korma said when he entered. The archivist looked particularly tired, only able to work with the beacon during his sleeping time—the work calibrating the Conduit was so demanding since they had finally activated the nexus of the miniature Relay. “I am sorry, everyone else was… already here. I have just finished explaining.”

“The short version for me, then.” Rukosh stood before the beacon, ignoring the stares of the other Protheans at his back. Harder to ignore was the blaze of the echo shard against his chest. It had been pulsing and burning against his skin every moment of the day, trying to singe images of Ksad into his dreams every day. It was still his penance, his apology to Ksad: memories of their life together begging to viewed, and he would refuse them. If he could not have the real thing, he would not let himself remember.

For the scientists standing around, perhaps this beacon was similar: an echo of the world they had all but given up on.

“The beacon is calibrated to send a signal, galaxy wide, to any other of our beacons still operational. Without indoctrinated agents, there is no way for the Reapers to intercept it, assuming Doctor Jinspar’s theory about a Reaper vanguard left behind.”

Some of the scientists shifted behind him.

“And what will the message be?”

“That is… what we were waiting for you to discuss,” Korma cast his eyes around the room and Rukosh turned. Silence hung in the air, and the team members all looked one to another.

“Well,” Doctor Prakvar said, legs quivering beneath him where he stood propped against a countertop. “No doubt we all have very different ideas. We never meet where the issue is not contentious. So how shall we begin?”

The elder Doctor had mellowed the closer the Conduit came to completion. The excitement of completing his life’s work had been overtaken by the slow, frozen reality that the most advanced technology in the universe now existed solely as a nebulous final hope for civilization.

“We send out a message to anyone left,” Yssynik suggested. “Tell them we are still here. Tell them we are working to retake our Empire.” No one nodded, and a moment later Yssynik sighed. His aura, already tinged with a blue reluctance, now showed his full resignation.

“There are not ships left on the Citadel,” Shalteen said what all of them were thinking by now. “The Keepers, they maintain the station, yes?  They prepare it for the next species each cycle? They would allow no trace of Prothean technology left there.”

“No, I cannot imagine they would,” Prakvar sighed.

“Still, we ask others to rendezvous with us there. We may even find that other survivors have already recolonized the Citadel. We could start again,” Yssynik said soberly. “We… would not be alone.”

“How many times have the Reapers exterminated life in this galaxy?” Vlokiv mused, an edge of incredulity in his voice. “Ten? A thousand times? Look at this place, look at these dead halls we have been living in: are they less incredible than the cities of Feros? Or the Ark of the Anjelic? Where is the inusannon survivors’ refuge?”

“That sort of talk isn’t going to help anybody’s mood, Doctor,” Jinspar held up a hand.

“We cannot possibly know for certain that our kind are exterminated,” Prakvar nodded.

“We cannot act as if we expect anyone else, either,” Rhavka’s soft voice carried more of a sting than Rukosh was used to hearing from her.

“Even if billions of our people survive,” Prakvar urged, “the brightest minds of our civilization are in this room right now. We have a responsibility to try and help whatever remains of our Empire. We are the last… the last light of the glory of our _people_.”

“But we are unable to help them,” Shalteen rubbed a hand over her scalp. “The Conduit is almost ready, we have been working to that end so hard and for so long we have not considered what comes next. We have no way to help anyone. Outside this facility, we cannot even help ourselves.”

“Everyone,” Korma raised his voice against the bristling auras in the air. “Please, for right now, we need only to decide what message we will send.”

“I don’t see how we can decide what message we’re going to send if we don’t know what we’re going to do with that Conduit,” Jinspar chuckled. “It’d be nice to tell people what’s going on. How can we do that if we don’t even know?”

“Advertising plans we are not sure we can accomplish is worse than a vague message,” Vlokiv huffed.

“What would you send, Doctor,” Rukosh said to Korma, who seemed taken aback. He blinked, but could not keep the grief from staining his aura a midnight blue.

“…Tell our story. Put as much of who we were into the beacon, so we are not forgotten. Not like the races who came before. Show that the Prothean people were not just another phase of the cycle. We endure.”

“Spoken like a historian,” Shalteen said bitterly, though she gave the archivist a bleary smile when he turned to her.

“Tell them about Ilos,” Vlokiv said. “Leave Vigil to sort out the details. Now that he is connected to the terraforming engine, he will outlive all of us exponentially. Tell whoever hears to come to Ilos—our own people or the next. Whatever we decide to do, Vigil will tell them.”

“Can we give away our position?” Yssynik straightened his back, “This is the most secure place maybe in the galaxy! Have we not been operating under that principle this whole time, still?”

“This is not just a farewell letter,” Shalteen spoke up. “Yssynik is right, we must consider that we are still fighting a war. As long as we are alive, we are still fighting. Even if we are dying, we are still in a war. What is the best _strategic_ use of this beacon?”

It was as if a tension in the air snapped, the apprehension of the others’ auras beat against each other until it dissolved all together, replaced by a placid gray of acceptance. They were still in a war, after all. Had Ksad known?

“A military decision, then.” Yssynik turned to Rukosh, “Perhaps… General, you would know best how to conduct this war?”

It was the first time that Rukosh had felt the auras of his fellow survivors reach out to him, receptive. Waiting. Even Prakvar, the old curmudgeon, watched him through impartial eyes.

And a part of him was sad. They looked like soldiers: hardened but frail. They turned to him as soldiers: the only prerogative left was to fight, and he had fought the longest. Some of them were young and would never see their next birthday. Some, like Vlokiv and Prakvar, were too old—should not have had the mental elasticity to change their worldview so drastically, and shouldn’t have had to.

“It will not be our fight for much longer,” Rukosh said gently. The room was quiet, and this time he did not leave them to wonder. “We have survived. We do not know about anyone else. We can plan to save thousands—even millions—of our own kind we are not sure exist. Or we can leave a message for the trillions we know are coming, and who will be slaughtered as our families were.”

“I don’t know,” Jinspar shook his head. “We still could have a great empire. I don’t want to give up on that possibility without proof. If there’s a way…”

“We put as much of our knowledge about the Relays into the beacon as we can,” Rhavka asserted. Jinspar shrank back. “The next cycle will have the technology it took us centuries to understand. When the Reapers lock the Relay network, they will still be able to plan troop movements, escape.”

“Might even learn how to keep the Relays open,” Shalteen chuckled. “Imagine, some little salarian evolves into a Relay technician using _my_ research!”

“Fleet movements?” Yssynik held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, “Show them how the Reapers fight? I am not very good at this.”

“We give them our weapon technology? Everything we have learned, as much as we can.” Korma seemed as at a loss as Yssynik.

“We have lost the war for ourselves,” Rukosh said when all eyes turned back to him. “The Relays, the Citadel: they are all tools the Reapers used to push us in for the slaughter.”

“Just a warning,” Prakvar said softly, his voice shaking with the quiver in his legs. “We tell the next cycle what is coming for them. Everything we have built is what the Reapers wanted us to build. The next cycle needs to know. They need time.”

“Just a warning, then,” Shalteen whispered.

“Can we…” Jinspar still looked unhappy, swallowed hard. “Can we still tell them about Ilos? With Vigil here, he can fill them in, right?”

Rukosh nodded.

“Embed as much of the information as we can. Whatever finds Ilos, organic or machine… that will be for Vigil to contend with.”

“It is a poetic sort of ending,” Vlokiv mused. “The last remnants of our civilization and the most complete record of what happened—actually the ruins of the inusannon. There is a roundness to it.”

There was a calm white glow to the doctor’s aura that failed to catch with the uneasy, interlocking web of psychic imprints the others were emitting.

“Let us get it over with, then.” Prakvar weakly pulled a nearby crate over and eased himself down onto it.

“We keep it brief, to ensure it is heard,” Korma said quietly. “I would send the message myself, but it seems that should be a group decision as well…”

Any ease that might have soaked back into the room at having decided what to do with the beacon immediately dissolved, the majority of the Protheans too panicked to even try to control the way it colored their auras, announcing loud and clear that they would _not_ appreciate the ‘privilege.’ Korma’s quaked more than any of the others, but Rukosh wondered if the others could see it. The archivist knew better than any of them the honor and the paralyzing responsibility of this task, and was willing to do it in spite.

“I’ll link with the beacon,” Jinspar stepped forward, smoothing the sweat from his palms. “I believe this is why Doctor Ksad… well. Perhaps this was part of his plan. I’ve interacted with more sapient races and linked with more species than anyone else in this room.” He approached the beacon, drinking in the height of the pillar before him, “I can adjust my output to oscillate most easily with the sorts of species that might find our message. Make it easy to digest for them.”

He took a deep breath and reached his hand out.

“Well, now, just a minute,” Yssynik grunted. “Shall we vote or something? This message represents all of us!”

“If by ‘us’ you mean our whole species,” Shalteen intoned dryly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jinspar turned around, but did not step away from the beacon. “I guess I was under the impression no one else particularly wanted to do the deed. I’m ready to. _Happy_ to, even.”

“It is not just that,” Prakvar said. “We… probably should take some sort of vote.”

“It does not matter to me,” Shalteen sighed. “Sorry, but… for the chance the next cycle has? Any warning is as good as any other. Korma, do you feel slighted?”

Korma shook his head.

“Any of us are qualified, and I think Shalteen is right about any warning being as good as any other…”

“I disagree.” It was Rhavka who spoke, louder than Rukosh had ever heard her, her aura pulsed with an iron resolution. “We cannot be flippant about this, and remember our basic principles. This is war. The message we send is a strategic move.”

Jinspar rocked next to the beacon. His body language was teeming with anxiety, but his aura maintained the same just-off glimmer of wonder and optimism. The contrast was the strangest thing Rukosh had seen about the exo-biologist.

“Yes, we must convince them a fight is coming,” Korma agreed after a moment.

Jinspar looked back over his shoulder at the beacon, eyes locked on the console.

“General Rukosh should send the message,” Yssynik said. Rhavka looked from him to the general, then nodded.

“Who better to show them the threat the Reapers pose?” Vlokiv said firmly.

“No,” Rukosh shook his head. Out of the corner of one of his eyes, he saw Jinspar turn fully to the beacon. “It is not my purpose. I am here to protect you, nothing more.”

“Well, protect everyone!” Shalteen scoffed.

“You saw the loss of the Citadel,” Prakvar’s voice was quiet, and he did not look up. “You fought more campaigns against the Reapers than any other general in the Prothean forces. You’re an Avatar of our people. It should be you.”

“Jinspar,” Vlokiv called. The biologist was practically standing at the console, staring up at the beacon. “I am sorry, but we may ask General Rukosh to send the message.”

Jinspar stared another moment, his hand twitching at his side. He turned slowly, his joking pout resolving itself slowly into a real frown.

“I really have to argue with this,” he shook his head. “No disrespect to the general, I think you’re right about everything you say. I didn’t see the war, I didn’t see people getting eaten and sliced up and turned into monsters or anything like that. But… I really think this is why I lived through the power shutdown, everyone! If we send a perfect message but no one can understand it? What good is it? I can make sure it’s understandable! I’ve done this sort of thing before!”

“Let him do it,” Rukosh said mildly.

Both Rhavka and Yssynik began speaking at the same time—both about how the next cycle might now even be able to read psychic-imprinted data regardless of how palatable it was made.

“If they are like us and have any interest in what came before, they will work to decipher it no matter how complex.” Korma split his attention between convincing Rukosh and Jinspar.

“I finally have a chance to be useful here,” Jinspar laughed, but there was just a sliver of… desperation? In his aura. “This is my specialty. You’ve all watched me flounder with these servos and circuits and signals! Come on!”

“We vote,” Prakvar cleared his throat.

The votes went to General Rukosh.

“Will you agree?” Prakvar asked, still not making eye contact.

He couldn’t refuse, of course.

“I can only send what I have seen.” It was as close as he could come to asking what he was supposed to do. Though no one seemed to recognize it for what it was. The echo shard was burning against his flesh even more intensely than ever, the memories stored there trying to batter their way into his consciousness: like the sound of distant, happy music calling him away from the road of his own mind.

Ksad would have known he was asking for help, and that he didn’t know what to do. Rukosh did not want to be an Avatar, and did not want to live a moment after Ksad left this life. Ksad should have lived forever, his legacy should have been the stars and the fires in the forest and his voice that whispered the infant races into adulthood and defended them against the Reapers. But what remained of his lover was… this mystery. An echo shard Rukosh wanted to experience so badly, he denied himself.

“What you have seen is enough,” Vlokiv said firmly.

Rukosh approached the beacon. It had been years since he had interfaced with any Prothean physio-psychic interfaces. The burn of the echo shard met the tingle of the controls on his fingers—detecting another outlet for the memories its holder was suppressing. Jinspar’s aura beat against him, but he relented at last and turned away.

Rukosh felt the interface pulling him in. He had to focus: not a tactical appraisal, not military strategy. Just a warning.

Just a warning.

There were voices in his head, beneath this composure and the memories Ksad had helped him make to brick up the screams of every terrible thing the Reapers had maimed. He tore down those walls, now.

Behind were the sights and smells of the battlefield that had stolen so many years of his resolve. In the heart of it, the spider at the center of the web, was a particular color—the precise and unique sort of pain the Reapers inflicted.

Ksad’s echo shard burned so hot against his chest he winced: memories of his lover trying to drown the fear and pain he was summing from his core. Almost as if something of Ksad remained, trying to stop him from reliving these memories on the level he needed to in order to transmit them across the galaxy.

But that is how Rukosh knew these were only memories, and not his mate. Ksad would not have stopped him, Ksad would understand, and would help him.  More than seeing his body in the stasis tube, this was the proof.

Ksasd was dead.

_Rukosh saw his ships split apart by Reaper canons._

_The screams of his crew as the ship took to flame—ruptures in the hull spilling curtains of fire down the corridors._

_The Citadel, the way its arms stretched wide one day and the whole station shook, and a giant conduit erupted through the center of it—thousands of Reapers._

_He saw Harvesters, wet a greedy mouths, shrieking in fury or in pain. It was the twisted image of a species he had admired. The image haunted him, the beasts themselves pursued him relentlessly from engagement to engagement._

_The inusannon, at the height of their civilization. He remembered the accounts Ksad had read to him, simple figures of impact craters and archaeological readings of former battles that his mate had transformed into vivid narratives about the destruction of this and that colony._

_Trillions dead in flames._

_The_ zha’til _swarming about his fleet, devouring them._

_The screams._

_Servos lodged in flesh._

_The battle against the Reapers, and the smell of blood on his face when he murdered his indoctrinated crewmates._

_His failure, he tried and failed, and could not blame himself. He didn’t have the ability to remember what he had seen—and he gave the sense of that too._

_An accretion disk surrounding a distant sun, the_ zha _home system. The star flickered, then exploded, nine habitable worlds burning to cinders in hours. Trillions on trillions of lives._

_The beach on Thesta Meridia…_

_No, he could not allow memories from the echo shard to slip through. They beat against his resolve, trying to take him back to the winter Ksad coaxed all these horrible memories to the surface and then helped him rebury them where they could be honored instead of feared. Back to the surf when the past would be the future again, and the tide._

_He replayed it all again and again and again, until the repetition made it impossible to deny how emphatic his fear was._

_He let slip the route to Ilos._

_He saw a Reaper in the dark side of a planet—one is already here, a vanguard is waiting, watching._

General Rukosh released the control a moment later, and the beacon throbbed: transmitting the signal across the galaxy, to any beacons still operational.

“Done.” His voice echoed through the chamber, the barriers of his aura never having betrayed what he had just confessed of the height of his own terror to the future.

“One message agreed on, one message sent.” Shalteen pulled herself upright as if to leave.

“What do we do with the beacon now?” Korma asked quietly.

“Destroy it,” Rukosh replied. None of the researchers so much as flinched when he grabbed at the column with his biotics and shredded it with a colossal warp field.

 

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

_Screams._

_A mouth opened to cry out and closing again to devour worlds._

_Burning._

_Always screams._

_He knew it all. Had seen it over and over. The warning. It took his breath away like the ache of an old wound splitting suddenly open into visceral new pain._

_It’s battle, Shepard._ The beacon seemed to say. _You’ve seen battle, but you have never seen genocide. I cannot show you genocide: there is no context. It is not that your brain is too different from mine, it is that you do not have the images. I do not have the images. The beacon remembers what I cannot, what my psyche will not let me hold onto._

_It is coming._

_It_ is _coming._

 _It happened,_ Shepard seemed to reply. _It is over._

_An anticlimax: a warning left out long after the danger had passed. That’s what this beacon is, now._

_Even as he said it, more screams._

_Cycles repeating over and over and over, and he was the one to stop them. What habits of the universe continued to turn over like seasons when Shepard had killed the winter?_

_The man who caught the sun before it fell beneath the horizon is not welcome anywhere._

_The beacon warning was no longer needed, and because Shepard could never convince himself of that, he would always be alone. What sort of ego would take the tragedy of uncountable lives and make it a personal accusation? Shepard felt nothing but shame, and the shame felt like the truth at last._

_And then there was a man, a Prothean, and he was kneeling in the surf and holding up a seashell. The sun was rising and the tide was rushing in, creatures in the sky singing like the screams were nothing more than inferior music. His voice turned the rolling tidal froth into a glass sheet on the sand, and all the shells glistened beneath. The sun was coming up, and the man was so happy. And he was in love._

_There is no one sun for the universe…_

_The man who raises the sun…_

_This was new. It was an instant, an accident in the vision. Shepard should not have seen it—it was joy and love-worn pain felt through a familiar ache. He would not have known it before, not if he had relived Eden Prime a hundred times._

“Shepard?”

His voice.

“Please wake up. Please wake up, Shepard…”

And so he did.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Echo shards.

**Commander Shepard**

When Shepard opened his eyes, a pair of bright blue ones stared back at him. The air smelled like ozone and a clean cologne—Kaidan’s cologne.

“Oh, you’re back.” The blue eyes faded, the ozone dissipated, and Kaidan’s beach-glass dark eyes worried down on him instead. As his biotics faded, Shepard felt the last of the crackle leap from Kaidan’s fingers to his palm. “I-I was worried…”

“Kaidan,” Shepard tried to smile, it felt foreign on his face. “Why were your biotics active?”

He watched Kaidan’s ears instead of his eyes. There it was, the softest tint of pink at the top. He loved a colorful man.

“You were out for a while,” Kaidan licked his lips, body still bent over Shepard. “And… every time we tried to move you… you’d just start seizing. I-I was worried about your hip, your legs, so I put you in a stasis field to keep you still…”

Kaidan inhaled sharply, maybe he’d been holding his breath and saving it all for that explanation and not for himself. Everything he had was for Shepard, that thought—and knowing that Shepard received and returned that love the way windowpane receives the rain—used to stab at him. The place it used to stab felt hollow.

His arm felt stiff, pain shooting down his wrist. He touched Kaidan’s face.

“Thank you,” he croaked. Kaidan pressed his cheek to Shepard’s palm like it might not be there. Or like the man who woke up on the floor might not be Shepard. He looked so sad, Shepard did that, Shepard was the cause. “How long?”

“Hours,” Kaidan breathed.

“Angry?”

“No.”

“’I told you so’?”

“No.”

“…I love you.”

“No matter what happens,” Kaidan’s eyes closed, rolling his face into Shepard’s palm. Shepard ran his fingers through Kaidan’s hair, the locks were still gelled and stiff between his fingers, and he knew his hand would come away smelling like the product Kaidan used. A spicey echo of a scent Kaidan left on their pillows when the collapsed into bed at the end of a long day on the Normandy, and on their pillows at home, and on Shepard’s chest in the hospital. When Kaidan touched their foreheads together, Shepard could smell that cologne again—the top layer burned away by the crackle of his biotics and bottom layer grown prominent by sweat and worry. Those memories were all new: no cologne aboard the Normandy, none in the hospital. Only since Shepard had ‘come home.’

The sudden rush of it startled him.

“I’m alright, I can get up,” Shepard whispered. Kaidan’s eyelashes against his eyelids, the features of Kaidan’s face mirroring but not touching own felt like the proprioception of a missing limb.

“I know. I know.” And Shepard didn’t know if Kaidan was answering him, or silently reaffirming ‘No matter what.’ “Didn’t think I still had it in me, to panic over you like that.”

The voice Shepard had heard, and followed out of the beacon’s vision. This wasn’t the voice.

“You sound pretty relieved, I guess…” he didn’t know what to say. He heard a sincerity in Kaidan’s voice, as if he had accidentally heard inside his head a private thought. It unnerved him, it wasn’t the voice that pled him up out of the bloody vision: that voice was nothing like this weak, private tease his lover let slip. And Shepard wondered if he woke up to the wrong man. Or in the wrong time.

Kaidan in a uniform too tight across his chest, wiping the sweat from his brow repairing a console in the galley, had a voice that rasped against his own hesitancy. It was a voice of powerful conviction and the fear that conviction could become a cage.

Kaidan, on Horizon with eyes dark as storm clouds, had a voice that grated against Shepard’s ego. It flayed away the conviction Shepard felt with its own, the way it shook but was steady and lashed out but retreated.

Kaidan, face pummeled, beads of sweat across a fevered chest, had a voice that rushed around and smoothed the pebbles of its hesitancy. It showed Shepard where the eddies were, and the ford.

Kaidan, arms open in his bed, stubble and gaze dark as a thunderhead, had a voice that rumbled through Shepard’s body. It promised the fire and the rain…

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Kaidan cleared his throat cradled Shepard behind the neck and back. He lit blue again, reducing Shepard’s weight with dark energy and brought him slowly to his feet.

“You…” Shepard swallowed, letting his full weight fall against Kaidan who didn’t sway a bit. “You said ‘please’?”

“Yeah, I did.” Kaidan gave him a strange look, mouth twisting around the idea of a smirk.

“And you called me ‘Shepard.’” Like he hadn’t done regularly in years. Like he did when he was talking too fast. But he hadn’t been talking too fast a moment ago.

“Old habits die hard,” Kaidan slid his hands down Shepard’s side, gently, and Shepard realized he was standing by himself. “Just like _you_.”

“Third time’s the charm?” Shepard smiled.

“Don’t even,” Kaidan shook his head, a soft smile. “Just don’t even.”

“Death! Ha! Hardly likely. There was no real danger, I’m happy to say,” Col Vedirus said, across the room and seemingly absorbed in his work. “Was monitoring your health all the while.”

“It didn’t feel like I was out that long,” or for only that long, “Did you get the data you needed?” Shepard’s head had begun to throb. The moment he placed a thumb to his temple, Kaidan had moved behind him, massaging his shoulders up into his neck.

The feel of Kaidan’s hands against him, palms conforming to then molding Shepard’s muscles, pressing his lifeline into Shepard’s skin. His fingers explored his shoulders as if trying to push through him. And for a moment, Shepard wished he wasn’t a ‘body,’ and that Kaidan’s hands would sink into him and pull the pain away in his palms, the rest of Shepard sieving through his fingers and back as he belonged…

He shook his head, tried to clear the sensation.

“That depends,” Col trilled, hustling over. “What did you see when you touched the beacon?”

“Reapers,” he swallowed. “The same thing I saw on Eden Prime.”

“As I suspected,” Col nodded.

“Wait, I held onto that _thing_ for hours?”

“Nah,” Kaidan’s massage halted, “You barely touched the thing! Then you just… fell over.”

“The vision, lasted longer than a moment, did it?” There was nothing to give away Col’s emotion behind the question.

“Longer than a second,” Shepard squirmed out from under Kaidan’s fingers, “Shorter than _hours._ ”

“Not surprising. I can counteract the intensity of the download on a human metabolism, but certain effects are likely to… linger.”

“’Certain effects?’” Kaidan watched Shepard warily.

“Yes. The beacon activates key—“ he seemed to think a moment. “It needs more sensory input than it has access to in an alien brain. So it makes room, so to speak. You may experience increased sensory acuity for some time. Perhaps a lingering sensation of the messenger’s expression,” he struggled with finding  the word, “Or their… perspective, if you will.”

 “Do you feel any of that?” Kaidan cupped his cheek.

“N-no.” He didn’t even know why he was lying. The trumped-up senses were distracting… and focused only on Kaidan. He didn’t know what that meant, or if it was supposed to mean anything. As for the perspective, he couldn’t say. He felt no less himself than he had felt for a long time, now.

“Once I’ve downloaded the data,” Col stepped back slowly, reaching behind him for a data-pad, “we’ll see how the Prothean codex interacts with alien physiology, and if it can be replicated.” He turned at last and sorted through a few other items, setting an echo shard on the edge of the counter.

“Well, how long’s that gonna take?” Kaidan crossed his arms.

“Four hours, at least.” Col turned with a smile, “But I believe the two of you have festivities to attend very soon! If you will return afterwards, I will be happy to share my results with you.” He gave an awkward wink, “In fact, I wouldn’t _dream_ of reviewing the results without you, say you’ll come back?”

Kaidan opened his mouth, but before he could reply, Shepard pointed at the artifact on the counter.

“My… is that my echo shard?”

Col looked down at the shard, back at Shepard. He turned his head just slightly.

“’Your’ echo shard?” He asked softly.

“Javik gave me the one he’d been carrying,” Shepard explained, turning to Kaidan. “In London, just before the push. When I woke up, I… didn’t have it.”

Col looked at the shard, back at Shepard.

“…I see,” his voice was low, a promise of words unspoken under the tone. He lifted the shard from its place and handed it to Shepard. He watched Shepard closely.

The shard was cool against Shepard’s palm. Col made a small sound in the back of his throat, appraised Shepard for—what? Signs he was experiencing the memories contained within?

“May I keep… _this_ echo shard here until you return, Commander?”

“Are we coming back, Shepard?” Kaidan asked, carefully. The wrong voice, not like he sounded when he stirred Shepard from his trance: like wind through a long tunnel, the promise of a way out.

Shepard pushed a knuckle into the center of his brow, tried to shake the feeling away.

“Yeah. After the celebration. You can hold onto this.”

 

++

**General Rukosh**

The experience with the beacon hadn’t sat well with Rukosh, and the echo shard would not stop burning against his chest. The insistence of the memories, as if they would swaddle him and scream at the uncertainties in his head in Ksad’s voice, was daunting.

Their species was gone. For every battle he had fought and won, the Protheans were extinct. And Ksad was gone. He had not failed his mate, and his mate had not left him. But he was gone.

Sitting alone on his small cot, Rukosh removed the echo shard from his armor, the burn of it remaining on his skin even as it prickled in his hands.

Ksad had acquired the echo shard—expensive, difficult to find one new manufactured—soon after they met. It was their every memory together. But shards like this were seldom so amenable as to go to the memory one wanted, if the user was… distraught. Rukosh was satisfied with that, he didn’t know what he wanted to see.

Their species was extinct. Ksad was dead.

So he closed his eyes, and gripped the echo shard tightly between his palms…

> …and he was sitting at the desk, except the thoughts pouring through him were not his own—he was Ksad.
> 
> A sound from the bedroom door drew his attention away from his console.
> 
> “What are you doing up?” Ksad scolded.
> 
> “What are _you_ doing up?” His mate Rukosh stood at the door to their bedroom, arms folded across his chest. He still looked sleepy, but the smile that had slipped underneath his ‘disapproving mate’ expression made him look as lively as Ksad had ever known him. “You have an early morning tomorrow, come to bed!”
> 
> “I had an epiphany about the inusannon tech-solution heuristics, if I—“
> 
> “Hrm,” Rukosh grunted, he rubbed his eyes, leaning up off his bad shoulder. “Tell me about it in bed.” He retreated back into the bedroom before Ksad could reply, but Ksad had been joined with him long enough to know all about that slow step, as if Rukosh would hate to reach the bed before Ksad chased after.
> 
> Rukosh could never say what he wanted, and kept such a tight control over his aura no one would know it from the imprints he left either. But Ksad knew, so he closed his work station and gave chase.
> 
> A few minutes later, Rukosh reclined on the bed, one arm tucked under his head and another draped across Ksad’s chest. Ksad laid his head on Rukosh’s belly, feet dangling over the side of the bed. It was how he always lay when he was still deep in thought, before he was ready to draw Rukosh into his arms and sleep.
> 
> His love, the stoic general, pretended to be dozing already. But Ksad only had to wait…
> 
> “So,” Rukosh said at last, accent not even thick with the heaviness of sleep, “Your new heuristics. What will they do?”
> 
> Ksad smiled, and couldn’t help but feel the laughter deep inside Rukosh’s chest when his lover absorbed his self-satisfaction.
> 
> “They took to studying the way that the Reapers communicated, and even noticed a similarity between the way the Reapers send and receive signals and the link the Keepers have with the Citadel. I’ve isolated the particular strand and structure—it’s primitive compared to the way their ships communicate, but it demonstrates that communication between Reapers and the Citadel is possible.” He felt pride emanating off Rukosh, “I think this is it, love. The Keepers interact only with the Citadel, and the Citadel is not commanded by the Reapers. But this is… well, it’s almost the signal the vanguard Reaper must have used to open the Citadel Relay and usher in the rest of its kind.” Then softer, “Once I get my new VI up and running, it can help me process the data.”
> 
> “The VI? You’re still developing it? I thought you gave up when we decided we’d be putting the facility to sleep?”
> 
> “Oh no,” Ksad laughed. “It’s our monitoring VI. It will manage power levels in the facility, put us to sleep and wake us, as well as monitor the whole galaxy to watch the Reapers actions, wait for them to go back to dark space. Always thinking, planning. Coming up with strategies for how to… well. Thinking. Planning.” He brushed a hand across Rukosh’s slowly rising and falling chest. “Just like you.”
> 
> “Like _you_ ,” Rukosh scoffed.
> 
> “I suppose a bit,” Ksad laughed, especially feeling the trepidation in his lover. “A bit narcissistic of me, I know. But… something needs to make sure we’re all safe while… the world ends.”
> 
> Rukosh shifted uncomfortably. Rukosh knew how he hated to talk about Reapers, hated the idea of going to sleep while they slaughtered the galaxy.
> 
> “This VI of yours,” Rukosh cleared his throat. “It makes me nervous.”
> 
> “What?” Ksad guffawed, “Why?”
> 
> “It will look like you?”
> 
> “Yes.”
> 
> “It will… sound like you?”
> 
> “Of course.”
> 
> “And it will have your… personality?”
> 
> “That _is_ the point of a personality imprint.”
> 
> “Scary.”
> 
> Ksad laughed and rolled onto his stomach. Only two of Rukosh’s eyes were open, peaking at him.
> 
> “Afraid you’ll kid the wrong Ksad, my love?” he teased.
> 
> “No, Ishan, I’m not.” Rukosh puffed his chest up. “It will be strange to hear your voice giving orders to the whole station.” The actual imprint Rukosh was giving off spoke differently though: a silent worry about _how much_ like Ksad the VI would be.
> 
> “You will adapt, I have no doubt.” Ksad knew he would, he always had, and so he had survived as a General in the most dangerous campaigns of the war so far. That was how their relationship had survived despite assignments on opposite sides of the galaxy for so long. “Besides, it will be the first voice you hear when you wake. Won’t that be nice?”
> 
> “If it were _actually_ your voice, I would prefer that,” Rukosh answered with a thin note of reservation.
> 
> “Would you like me to have it say something romantic, Ishan?”
> 
> Rukosh didn’t bite at his tease. By now, the mental barriers Rukosh had carefully built to shield his aura were dissolving, and Ksad could feel his emotions slip into and out of his mate’s soul, amplified when they returned to him across Rukosh’s hand on his skin. It was difficult to tell which of them was feeling what—gone were the days where every sensation from his mate was tinged with apprehension at such vulnerability.
> 
> “What will you call your creation?” Rukosh smiled, suddenly, a glimmer in his eye.
> 
> “You have a suggestion?”
> 
> “Vanquisher?”
> 
> “Ah!” Ksad lifted himself up, just for a moment, and settled into Rukosh’s arms. “A strong name!”
> 
> “Vitriol?” Rukosh continued, closing his eyes. “Voracious!”
> 
> “All wonderful names, General!”
> 
> “Pah. ‘General.’”
> 
> “But I already know what I’m going to call it,” he nuzzled into Rukosh’s forehead, and his lover’s eyes opened. “It’s going to be called ‘Vigil.’”
> 
> “’Vigil?’”
> 
> “Mhm,” he smiled, pressed a kiss to Rukosh’s lips, whisperd: “I could name it a lot of things. But it’s my gift to you. It will be there to keep you safe. I want you to know… that I’m keeping watch over you while you sleep. That I left a light on for you when you wake.”

\--Rukosh was himself again, he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t hold the shard a moment longer… not now. Not now.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STRUGGLING. STRUGGLING is what I'm doing to get the rest of this thing posted--this weekend, I only tried once, true. But it just spun. This note has been saved in a Word Doc on my Desktop. 
> 
> Cannot thank you enough, really can't. It's novel-length nonsense I wished I could have posted all at once for you. You are the best readers and I legitimately think of you as I fall asleep at night: 'Come on, bagog. You've just GOT to get it up there, they trust you!'

**Commander Shepard**

“Shepard…?”

Kaidan was calling him ‘Shepard’ again. Like he did when he was talking too fast, as if everything he said to Shepard these days was talking too fast. Or as if they’d strayed back in time before they were in love. If he turned right now, looked Kaidan in the eye and smiled and said ‘Hm?’ they could continue getting dressed and go to the celebration.

“Hey, Shepard,” But it was too late for that, now. Kaidan put a hand on his shoulder and spun him around.

They had left the archive about an hour ago. They’d been silent in the cab. Took turns at quiet showers, and now stood, both dressing, in silence. While Kaidan had showered, Shepard had sat on the bed, towel around his waist, and stared at the leg-braces against the wall. No matter how much he willed himself to stand and dress, it was as if he couldn’t make his body obey his commands. So he listened to the sound of the water of the shower against the tile: the hollows where he knew Kaidan had turned his face to the spray, the splashes where he knew Kaidan was sluicing the soap up his thigh, the sloshing when Kaidan decided it was time to stop loitering with his back to the showerhead and time to face it and begin to wash.

Shepard had barely put on his underwear by the time Kaidan stepped out.

“Look, I… sorry, you’re shaking, let’s sit down a minute, okay?” Kaidan guided him over to the bed and Shepard couldn’t meet his eyes.

“No, I’m fine.” But he sat on the edge of the bed. Kaidan stayed stooped. “What’s the matter?”

Kaidan sighed that heavy ‘I’m thinking hard thoughts’ sigh.

“You know me, I’m not… gonna rush you to talk about anything you don’t wanna talk about but,” Kaidan kneeled and Shepard couldn’t meet his eye. So he sank to the floor at Shepard’s feet and leaned back against the bed. “What’s going on, huh? I just… something’s wrong and I…”

Shepard had never exactly heard Kaidan’s voice to catch in his throat like this, to trail off in a choke. This was the wrong voice. This was wrong.

“It’s been a long day, I guess.” He smiled down at Kaidan, but his lover was staring at the wall. His hair was still glistening and combed into perfect rows, and the sensation of it was mesmerizing in the lingering sensory heightening of the Prothean beacon: the meticulous way with which Kaidan treated every matter in his life. The meticulous way Kaidan had cared for him every hour. The pit fell out of his stomach, wishing he had done more with the Prothean sensory overload, looked more into Kaidan’s eyes, his teeth when he smiled. He wished he’d done more.

“No.” Kaidan’s voice was hollow, “I feel like it’s more than that.”

“I…” Shepard let his leg relax, let it lean against Kaidan’s shoulder. “I don’t know. I think I might still be a little emotional after the beacon.”

“Yeah, you’re that, too.”

Too.

Kaidan said, once, that sometimes he thought he’d seen too much to ever be really happy. Shepard thought he saw too much in the moment to let himself be happy. And ‘Shepard’ was most of what he saw, these days.

“Being here, on the Citadel, for the first time has just stirred up some things I thought I’d gotten past.”

Kaidan wound his arm around Shepard’s leg, lightly squeezing the shin like he was keeping himself rooted to him.

“Anything you want… to talk about?”

“I don’t think so,” Shepard swallowed. “Something I’ll just figure out sooner or later.”

Kaidan held tighter.

And Shepard heard, in his mind, a voice he knew saying ‘Don’t leave me behind.’ Kaidan’s voice was different, though, when he spoke again.

“I love you.” Kaidan took a deep breath. “I’ll always love you. That means I’ll believe you. And it’s been hard to believe you, lately. I know you need to take your time, and I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, I _know_ I can’t. Keep thinking about watching you run off to that damn Crucible, or seeing you mangled up in that hospital bed and all the nightmares and the therapy and I know that watching it happen… can’t be as bad as what it’s like to go through it. But when I think of what I felt, watching it happen… I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Shepard closed his eyes and wished they’d wet his cheeks, but they didn’t. He felt like he was unraveling.

“I trust you. That’s the one thing I know about you, over everything else: if you say it, it’s worth believing. Lately I haven’t been able to think that way, and I couldn’t believe you were doing as fine as you said you were doing. I know you, Shepard, and you’re not alright. I don’t think you are, anyway. And maybe you don’t _know_ what’s wrong, so you don’t want to say anything.

“Or like you’ve changed or something, and that I won’t understand. I know you’ve changed, though. I love you. I’m going to love whoever you are. Always. And because I love you, I have to believe you.” He looked up at last, “So if you tell me that you really are feeling alright, I’m gonna believe you. I’m gonna try. I will.”

When the Intelligence had asked him to choose what the ‘solution’ was for the whole universe, the choices were death, domination, and dispersal. Kaidan gripped tight around his leg the way the braces had. He thought he should feel some deeper sensation in that, but the effects of the beacon had worn off, and Kaidan’s hand was just a hand. Choices, then.

“Everything is alright, Kaidan,” he said. “I’m just tired.”

A lie.

 

++

 

**General Rukosh**

He had become accustomed to the others referring to the VI as ‘he’. He had spoken a few times with the machine, and he had been civil.

But since the hour it awakened him from his cryo-sleep, Rukosh had not set foot inside Vigil’s chamber.

The hologram still hovered above his projector in the center of the great room at the bottom of the complex, like a flaming brazier in a cathedral strewn with vines and cables, dead and desiccated bodies in the closed pods high above the gangway on either side. There were no others here today. Odd, considering the researchers spent nearly all their time in this chamber, planning the work they had, conversing with the VI. Only when Rukosh had to be involved in the decision making process did they consent to gather elsewhere. The whole chamber seemed designed to make Rukosh feel like a penitent coming to pray the moment he stepped out the elevator, but he tried to imagine that was his hostility and not his perception making that judgement.

“General Rukosh,” Vigil said as he approached. That voice. It was Ksad’s voice: the measured syllables, the erudite _pavak_ accent, and the quit professionalism. Not the way he had spoken to Rukosh. But the way he had spoken everywhere else. “It is good to see you.”

Vigil was still no more than a column of static and holographic fractals, and no matter how hard he stared, Rukosh could see no trace of Ksad in the flashing image. He wondered for the first time if the VI had, perhaps, sabotaged his ability to look like his creator… could it be so considerate?

He regarded Vigil a long time, and Vigil waited, as he always did. The guardian to watch over him as he slept. The light his lover left on for him when he woke.

Everything about the VI ripped Rukosh apart at his core.

“How much of him is in you?” he asked the flickering light softly.

“Less than is in you.”

“No poetry, machine,” he shook his head slowly. But in his own way, it was an answer: it was the sort of thing Ksad would have said. “Tell me plainly. You know I will not understand the technical jargon.”

Vigil seemed to pulse softly in silence a moment before responding.

“Doctor Ksad Ishan programmed my personality before equipping me with the technical subroutines to run the facility. My basic framework is fashioned after a deep-scan of Doctor Ksad’s brain. I have none of his memories, but my subroutines are arranged to process information in much the manner he did—albeit with a higher capacity for data processing and speed.”

“And that is all?” Rukosh said bitterly. The cavernous terminal room felt very dark. “You see data the way Ksad saw data?”

“Not only that,” Vigil responded, almost too quickly for a dispassionate virtual intelligence. “I have Doctor Ksad’s aesthetic preferences. I interact with personnel much as he would. I know what he would find funny or sad.”

“But not his sense of humor.”

“I believe you would be more able to evaluate that than I would, General.”

It was difficult to listen to that voice, placidly detailing exactly how far its program was than the man Rukosh loved who had programmed it. He could barely keep his aura contained, rage and grief together turned it a venomous shade of green.

“Ksad programmed you specifically, regarding me,” he declared, looking up at the machine for it to fill in the details.

“Yes,” Vigil sounded reluctant, if that were possible. Rukosh wondered if he was imagining it. After all, Ksad never hesitated like that in answering a question. “Ksad Ishan did not… map the parts of his mind associated with any of his interpersonal attachments. This way, I could have no preference among the researchers of this facility. However, in the early stages of my development, Doctor Ksad instructed me specifically to ‘take care of Rukosh Ishan.’”

Rukosh narrowed his eyes.

“He _what?_ ”

“To ‘take care of Rukosh Ishan.’ When I asked the Doctor what form that care should take, he would not tell me. I believed it to be a test of my higher reasoning functions. He told me later, ‘once you have more of my personality mapped to you, you will understand.’”

“And now you do?” Rukosh spat.

“No,” Vigil answered simply. “I am _not_ Ksad Ishan, and I will never know exactly what he meant. This was hard to accept at first. However, I did have nearly a thousand years of passive scans during which to consider the issue of how to obey his ambiguous directive.”

“If you truly could think like Ksad,” Rukosh was trembling, “You would have understood that I was not meant to live without him. You should have changed the power reserve priority. No matter how it was established. You should have kept Ksad alive no matter what.”

“I deduced that about you, General Rukosh. But I also know Doctor Ksad’s feelings on the subject,” the pillar said lightly. “The two of you are stubborn on this point, and the reserve priority was an absolute I could not change.”

“You woke me up last,” Rukosh’s voice was deathly low. “Was that part of you ‘taking care of me’?”

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

“Ksad Ishan was a great man who realized that, for all his talents, he would not be the most useful candidate in the result that only a few of his team could be saved in a power loss. Doctor Ksad’s primary usefulness for this endeavor, as he saw it, was accomplished in the planning of this facility and its contingencies.” Vigil spoked carefully, almost the way Ksad explained things to new arrivals on the surface. “I watched over the facility for centuries, working and reworking contingency plans to save as many as possible. Shutting down pods one by one, present within as each person’s brain-function ceased. I was present when Ksad Ishan died. I did not know how to speak with you once you awoke, so I woke the others, hoping an organic could communicate the information more sensitively.”

“…Did he die peacefully?”

“They all did,” Vigil responded. “But they all died.”

“Yes.”

“I now know what Doctor Ksad wanted of me with his directive to ‘take care,’” Vigil paused for a moment, and Rukosh imagined he was considering how he would phrase what he was about to say to the General. “I am not Ksad Ishan, and I do not have his affinity for you. But I have developed my own affinity, over the centuries: analyzing and processing the records logged of you in my databanks.

“Ksad Ishan, my creator, loved you. But I do not believe his love dictated his decision to ensure your survival. Not directly. Doctor Ksad knew that of anyone in this facility, even more than he himself, you were capable of thinking of the next cycle, of the species which will inherit the galaxy. He knew you would not stop until you had found a way to help them, you had never stopped trying to protect those the Prothean Empire would have overlooked. If only you survived the power-loss, you would spend years learning to repair the Conduit alone. To best ‘take care’ of you, I had only to leave you the space you required to complete what you required.”

Rukosh heard, for a moment, the lilt of Ksad in Vigil’s voice, and the words were… almost Ksad’s.

“It is painful, even knowing you exist.” He took one step closer, leaning on a railing. He felt so tired, weak, and confused.

“I suspected you would find me unsettling, but I am what I was made. And I wish to be a testament to Doctor Ksad. He has done more for his people than anyone.”

“I know,” Rukosh whispered.

“….General? Why did Ksad Ishan design me after his personality imprint?”

Rukosh looked up, wished for a moment the cloud of swirling light had eyes to focus on.

“He wanted to prove to… the research team that he took absolute responsibility for their safety. His form and his voice watching over them.” Rukosh shrugged, “Also a touch of narcissism.”

“I see,” Vigil responded. “…Doctor Ksad would have found that funny.”

“Yes, he would have.” Rukosh breathed deeply.

“I am sorry I grieve you, General.”

“Every moment of my life which I treasure, all the things that ever made me feel at home and safe: I did not _feel_ those things—not through physio-psychic linking. I heard them spoken to me, and all of them my whole life through, were said in your voice, Vigil. His voice.”

“I see.”

“And now I have heard the worst news of my life in that same voice. Knowing exactly why my Ishan did what he did does not dull the pain of that at all. Not for a moment.”

The old general and the virtual intelligence stood together in the silence. Rukosh could feel his composure returning to him like silt settling to the bottom of a puddle. And yet, he stood there a long time, and imagined—almost because he had no choice—that the machine was quietly remembering Ksad as well.


	12. Chapter 12

**Commander Shepard**

The Citadel Council had changed significantly since the war, representatives from all the different Council races now represented, all standing on a raised dais in front of an expansive crowd of dignitaries and media. The Council, who never directly addressed the galaxy prior to 2187, now gave all its edicts through tight-beamed conferences, live.

It was a wiser, kinder, more responsible Council for the people they represented. Shepard had had no time to consider whether he was cynical or happy about the new development, since the war. It was inappropriate to consider such things now, in the middle of a ceremony celebrating his action in the war and before.

But after the conversation with Kaidan earlier, cynicism over the new state of the galaxy was the only safe thought.

Always thinking of the galaxy first, not himself. Commander Shepard. That was why he was here.

The turian councilor was speaking: a rousing, militaristic piece of oration. No matter how high he raised his arms and his voice and paused for the audience’s applause, all eyes were still on Shepard. He could feel them. Minimum camera coverage on the speaker, and every other holo-lens in the room on him. The news would be dissecting his every expression as if he were a weather event.

He had been transported to the ceremony in a separate car and dropped off at a back door without the red-carpet arrival the media had expected. They seated him behind a number of flowering plants: no one would see the braces on his legs. Commander Shepard could not need assistance to walk, not at a celebration like this. That is why Kaidan was seated on a lower dais and not next to Shepard. Shepard had wanted to leave the moment he heard that. He had wanted to beg them not to separate them.

Instead, he’d said he was fine.

And so, Kaidan was beneath him, out of sight, staring out at the crowd pondering the meaning of the words “I’m fine” just as he had been back in their room.

Shepard was, very starkly, despite the eyes, alone.

++

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh and Prakvar stepped back from the Conduit relay, Rukosh shooing Prakvar away and closing the panel he’d been struggling with. He caught up with Prakvar in a few steps, then kept pace as the Conduit researcher leaned into his cane with every step.

“Clear?” Shalteen called out from a distant control terminal.

“Clear,” Rukosh called back. He attended Prakvar at a slippery step and turned back. Jinspar slid down a nearby scaffolding—practically bouncing—and bounded up to stand next Rukosh: as close to the quiescent Relay as was safe.

“Good. I know everybody’s eager, but if anything organic matter goes through that slipstream outside a contained craft, it’s…” Shalteen trailed off, tapped a finger against her chin. “What’s the word, Doctor Vlokiv?”

“’Total atomic dispersal,’” the doctor shouted back with a smirk. He and Korma stood further back, far down the ramp up to the dais of the Conduit. It had been raining earlier this morning, and the foliage which filled the crater still glistened green, a stark contrast to the red sky.

“Sounds nasty!” one of the Juniors shouted from atop another scaffold.

“What?” Shalteen shouted back.

“ _Sounds nasty, ma’am!”_

_“What are you_ saying _Gajik?”_

“…measurements nominal, Doctor Shalteen!”

“Good!” She grinned and nodded to Prakvar when he tottered up beside her. “Any words before the test, Doctor Prakvar?”

“I really need to sit down…” he puffed.

“Historic words, Doctor,” Shalteen whirled around. “And so, in the name of everyone getting to sit down: Vigil, would you please?”

There was a colossal thunk that echoed off the crater walls and into the sky, and the Relay gyros began to move.

++

**Commander Shepard**

The first step in glorifying Shepard was reminding the crowd of the enormity of the Reaper threat—a thing no one needed to be reminded of. Say one thing obvious, the next thing said will be seen as obvious as well—Shepard is a hero.

And so it was a celebration of the obvious, the galaxy celebrating in the certainty of what they already knew in the wake of a war full uncertainty.

Shepard gave his speech: strode to the podium as if he were not hobbled, stood tall in his dress-uniform, and gave the speech he’d prepared. He used to practice them with Kaidan…

Kaidan. Shepard had sat back down. The whole audience had applauded, everyone had risen to their feet as he returned to his seat. And now the politicians were talking again.

None of it seemed to matter to him. He had never felt so alone. The applause had rushed over him and stripped him bare. Without Kaidan to anchor him, without the distraction of the pain in his hips and legs, there was nothing but the crowd and Shepard. All of them real and living, and him something else. Or was it the opposite?

Suddenly, the galaxy seemed like a very remote and hollow thing. He knew he should feel guilty, and he obliquely wondered what his face must look like on all those holo-lenses. Did they know he was looking out at them as if they were some object? He was supposed to kill the Reapers, ‘everyone’ was just a convenient explanation for those who couldn’t understand that it was destiny. It was the same way ‘checking how the tomato plants were coming along’ was Kaidan’s reason to leave the house and spend some time by himself alone: an excuses for what needed to be done, Kaidan _had_ to get away from him, daily.

And Kaidan.

Wasn’t it _his_ future Shepard had believed in? “The women… the children?” He had been afraid he had shattered when the Crucible exploded, like it deleted his humanity along with his synthetic processors, and that Kaidan was still beautifully, unattainably human. Now… had Kaidan always been some excuse? A reason to say ‘this is why I survived, for you’ when the real reason was that… he was destined to end the cycles?

Shepard’s hands began to shake.

 

++

**General Rukosh**

“Rhavka?” Shalteen shouted over the whirring of the machinery up to the signal techs. “Got a signal?”

On one of the scaffoldings, Yssynik and Rhavka were making some last minute adjustment. A week ago, Rhavka had located the position of the Cotoxi relay on the Citadel, and established a signal path for the Relay slipstream to follow. In theory.

Rhavka nodded to Yssynik, who held up a hand.

_“Doctor Rhavka has relayed the Citadel coordinates to me, Doctor Shalteen_ ,” Vigil’s voice came through Rukosh’s earpiece. _“I am now in control.”_

When he didn’t hear the next stage command, Rukosh turned to look down at Shalteen. She looked uncertain, her aura a wash of undisguised anxiety. She took a deep breath, and smiled, noticing Rukosh. She motioned cordially to a place by her side: a safer distance. Rukosh grinned, shook his head. She shrugged, gave him a wink.

“The eezo, Vigil. It is time,” she called.

There a flash. The foliage in every direction flattened with the force of the shockwave when the core activated. Jinspar whooped, nearly lost his footing. The dais rumbled, the Conduit shuddering, then it stabilized.

The Conduit was now connected to the Cotoxi relay. They had a path off-world, to the Citadel.

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

No.

Shepard closed his eyes—cameras be damned—and tried to imagine Kaidan’s face. He’d seen the man an hour earlier, knew he was seated out of sight not ten meters away, but he couldn’t see his face in his mind, like it was deleted with his empathy and his sense of self and his humanity.

But he could hear his voice. Softly telling him to close his eyes whenever he had a flashback, or woke up not remembering yesterday. Not knowing why he was in the hospital.

_“Think about what you know.”_ Kaidan used his name, then. Not ‘Shepard’. Shepard hadn’t heard that voice in a long time. He needed that voice, not the tone that he heard in Kaidan today.

_“The Reapers are gone…”_

_“That’s right.”_

_“I destroyed them.”_

_“Good, you’re doing great. What else? What do you_ know? _”_

_“I love you…”_

_“That’s sweet, and I love you too, but give me some events. Things that happened. People.”_

Shepard felt himself pale.

He knew the Reapers had harvested the galaxy too many times to count. He knew they would never do it again. And the person—the event that stood between those two ‘knowns’—was him. It was too big. It was too big to imagine.

If he could believe he was destined to do it, he could understand that like some sort of fairy-tale. If he could believe that he was somehow different from everyone else, then _that_ would make sense.

But he wasn’t, nothing was destined. His humanity entombed him. He did not understand how to cope with the enormity of what he’d done.

 

++

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh could hardly hear the cheering over the Relay itself. The light the core produced flooded the whole crater with light, the wet leaves shining in the blue glare, and the red sky looked black compared to it. After a few minutes, Shalteen clapped her hands and returned to her comms.

“That will be our test for the day, everyone. Shut it down, please, Vigil!”

The gyros continued to spin.

_“I am unable to shut down the Conduit, Doctor.”_

Shalteen rolled her eyes, breathed a muted curse.

“Not a problem, this is still good. We can still work with this.”

“We have to pull out the exchange node, here,” Prakvar sighed.

“No, no.” Shalteen waved her hand, “There is a connection fault between here and Vigil’s chamber. If we rip out that node, we spend another ten hours repairing it. We have enough power to keep the Conduit running for weeks if we need. I will start looking for the fault,” she turned and yelled to the others, “I could use some help, actually?”

The flashing center of the Relay gyros was entrancing. Rukosh had seen it from space more times than he could count, losing himself in the sight later in the war as a fleet waited for a Reaper to activate the Relay system to travel system to system. It was the only time the Relays were operational and fleet movements could be made, and it made for hours of waiting for a short window wherein the Relay would allow them through.

Yssynik and Rhavka climbed down, not hustling to follow Shalteen the way the Juniors were.

“I will stay here,” Prakvar declared above the din after trying to stand and collapsing back onto a box he’d found for himself.

_“No offense doctor,”_ Shalteen said over the comms, _“But I think we should keep some quicker feet in with the Conduit, just in case. I do not like leaving it unattended.”_

“They have been ‘unattended’ in space for millions of years,” Vlokiv muttered to Korma, climbing onto a tram and whizzing out of the crater, back into the main facility.

“This is Rukosh,” the general said into his comms, the proximity of the Relay making the channel patchy. “I will stay.”

Prakvar was practically falling asleep against his console, at least a hundred paces from the Conduit. Rukosh stayed up on the dais, within the glow of the spinning gyros, the crash of the dark energy pulsing around him like a waterfall.

“Incredible,” Jinspar said, stepping up behind him. “For the first time maybe in the history of _any_ race, we’ve built a working Relay! I can’t believe I actually had a hand in it.”

“I will feel better once we reach the Citadel.”

“Imagine, it took our best and brightest how many _decade_ s to replicate the Reapers’ technology.” He sighed, a deep hum of contentment. The way his aura glowed was like the blue of the Relay core, a radiant and triumphant moment, poised at the cusp. “It makes you wonder, if we had finished this before the Reapers returned, do you suppose they would have seen us as… not equals, maybe. But partners?”

“Unlikely,” Rukosh frowned, stepping forward, hoping Jinspar would decipher that he meant to be alone. But the biologist continued waxing poetic over his shoulder.

“They _could_ destroy _all_ life, but they don’t. Just sapient life. Do you suppose they’re waiting for a species to evolve _enough?_ And the Relays are just demonstrations of what we must do to prove ourselves?”

“I do not care.”

“Really? The kind of power they possess! The _knowledge_ they must have? And you, one of the few to _ever_ consistently defeat them in combat! I imagine that if they returned this time, they might consider us differently.”

“Their motivations do not interest me,” Rukosh sighed. “I hate them, and I fear them.”

“Hmm,” Jinspar voice hummed in commiseration behind him.

There was the dullest throb beneath the dais, as if the great Conduit before them—huge though still a Relay in miniature—were shivering apart the universe around them. It was a soothing feeling.

There was a shout from the ramp below:

“GENERAL!”

A blue beam erupted through Rukosh’s right shoulder, sizzling through sinew and bone.

Jinspar.

Rukosh spun away from the next blast, trying to ignore the queasy feeling as blood gushed from his shoulder—a sickly, sticky feeling between his armor and his skin.

“I don’t understand, General!” Jinspar shouted over the whirling drone of the Relay gyros. He held a gun on Rukosh now—how had he concealed it?—the same placid smile was still affixed to his face. “You are the ideal emissary of the Reapers’ next harvest! We can pave the way for them now, put ourselves back in cryo…”

Rukosh’s arm hung limply at his side, poised to leap out of the way if Jinspar decided he was not such an ideal emissary after all. There was no place to take cover behind, in his condition he couldn’t hope to avoid the shots for long, and if he got too close to the Relay, the mass effect would rip him to shreds. He could see Prakvar below, frantically attempting to reach others on the comms. The comms were dead, or the others were… Far down the hall, there was a flicker of light, and an immense forcefield was erected blocking the tunnel.

But Rukosh couldn’t focus on that right now, not with the pain in his shoulder and the weapon leveled at him.

“Indoctrinated!” Rukosh shouted, furious.

“No!” Jinspar shook his head. “I simply see the truth, the Reapers are above us, and the only way we can ascend to their level is with their help!”

“Why did you allow yourself to be placed in cryo-stasis?” His voice against the deep throb of the Conduit’s energy.

“Dr. Ksad kept _very_ tight control over the comm systems. Signaling the Reapers to tell them of this facility would have been impossible, and besides…” he switched the gun to his right hand and held out his left, “I knew the Reapers would not want to destroy us! The greatest minds in the Prothean empire, _and_ the greatest soldiers! We have proven our value, our resistance, just by surviving their harvest! No other species in countless cycles has done as much!”

A blur from the corner of his eye drew Jinspar’ attention: Prakvar’s hurled cane crashing into him. It was a good throw for the hobbled scientists—even now rushing up as fast as his limp would carry him—but Jinspar was no fool, kept his weapon trained on the general.

In a flash of biotics, Jinspar hurled the old man back.

“I’m sorry, Doctor Prakvar!” Jinspar called down, never taking his eyes off the general. “I don’t want to hurt anybody here, but we need to focus on what’s important.”

Prakvar was crumpled on the ground in a heap, but burned green for just a moment, hurling a warp field up the ramp.

Rukosh sprung forward.

A shot skimmed his cheek.

Jinspar grunted as he absorbed Prakvar’s warp field, his own biotics flinging out a wave of energy strong enough to throw Rukosh back when he lunged. He skittered closer to the Relay. Jinspar was firing down the ramp at Prakvar.

Rukosh reached out with his biotics, pulled Jinspar off his feet, but even as he felt another thick trickle of blood burble out from the hole in his shoulder, Jinspar struck the ground and the whole dais rattled. They were both up a second later, Rukosh held again at gunpoint…

But this time, he had gained some distance.

There was some commotion from the corridor, what sounded like one of the armored ground vehicles speeding up the corridor.

“We can do more for our galaxy _with_ them than against them, General.”

Rukosh was at least gratified to find Jinspar panting from the scuffle.

The orange force field in the main hall flickered out, and out of the corner of his eye, Rukosh saw the armored vehicle rushing out to meet them.

Until the force field flashed on the instant before the vehicle would have crossed the threshold into the crater, and instead it slammed against the energy field, crumpling in to a burning wreck.

Jinspar frowned, tightened his grip on his weapon.

“I’ve worked hard for our people, General Rukosh,” he said, voice quivering with his earnestness. “I’ve seen the kind of universe we can build if we are worthy of them! I want to be worthy of them, I believe we are.”

 

++

**Commander Shepard**

He had been no better than a Reaper.

Given a task no one could understand, no one could solve. He had found a ‘solution’ many _should_ have found unacceptable, but none seemed to. They mourned the dead, but they didn’t hunt him, the way they should have. He was a mythic thing, and mystified that he had been coddled and nursed to health by a Good Man who should have slain him like a dragon.

No.

_“Think about what you know.”_

He had destroyed. Had had killed. Had he been ready?

Not alone, none of that alone.

 

++

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh couldn’t take his eyes off the gun to see if Prakvar was still moving. The curious tint of Jinspar’s aura grated against his own steeled resolve. Jinspar was focused, as much, at least, as Rukosh.

“They destroy,” Rukosh said simply, the muscles in his leg twitched when Jinspar fumbled the gun, but he stayed rooted to the spot. “Do you destroy, Jinspar?”

“I survive. I offer the Empire a future!”

“Do you _destroy_ , Jinspar?”

“The Reapers want—“

“—they want to destroy. Do _you_ want to destroy?” Rukosh sneered, “ _You_ , a scientist, an idealist. Pathetic. A coward. You can’t make the choices about who lives and who dies. You’re not ready for the carnage, or the sacrifice.”

“I—“

“ _I_ destroy, scientist,” Rukosh lost control of his aura, flaring like a black ink up into the crater. “I killed thousands of my own men because they _might_ jeopardize my mission. I locked you all in a vault, knowing our species would die. I left my post to do it—my fleet crumbled a month after I resigned. I am ready to kill, to maim, to murder,” he seethed. “And to destroy.”

“General Rukosh, your commitment to—“

“I _destroyed_ Reapers. That is how they know me. How they _understand_ me. Do _you_ destroy, _scientist?_ ”

“Our people—“

“—the greatest qualities you admire were exemplified in Ksad Ishan, a man who believed the opposite of your idiocy. You are nothing. Are you ready to _destroy_ , boy?”

“When the Reapers—“

“—Ksad was ready. Ready to sacrifice others. And himself. _He_ is the reason you survived,” Rukosh’s snarls could not dampen the lingering smile on Jinspar’ lips, but by now Rukosh was shouting at himself. “The best of us are already dead, you waste. You do not have the strength to do any more than what you have done. You do not even mock the Reapers with your survival. You are an insult. And the Reapers will grind you into dust and scatter you into the darkness between galaxies. You will not even rejoin the stars that created you.”

“When we reach the Citadel, we’ll activate the Relay, and then once we—“

Rukosh sprang forward.

His limp right arm whipped out as he pivoted out of the path of the next shot, bashed into Jinspar with just enough force to stagger him. Rukosh grunted against the surge of pain and rocketed his palm into the pistol barrel, sending it careening off the dais.

Jinspar kneed him in the chest when he stumbled forward.

Rukosh flashed green, summoned as much biotic energy as he could.

Jinspar flew back a few meters, then stopped, his own body crackling with green energy. Rukosh squinted at the scientist, still smiling balefully. His biotics should not be this strong.

He managed to shield himself against the blast Jinspar flung at him, but felt his armor being ripped apart in the next warp field. It was not advisable to keep this up.

When he feinted towards the steps of the dais, Jinspar lost his footing. Rukosh had him lifted into the air in a moment, slamming him down into the floor.

He closed the distance, screaming out against the crash the active eezo core beside him. Jinspar caught him in the grapple. Now, the smile was gone, eyes full of a very sentient expression of horror. Perhaps even self-preservation.

“General!” he shouted, “Why can’t you see… this is for the Empire!”

The younger man got the upper hand, digging a thumb into the blast-hole in Rukosh’ shoulder. But the general’s stance held, refusing to be buckled.

A shiver rocked through Rukosh’s body, the indoctrinated scientists thumb gouging into his flesh was trying to transmit an imprint into his nervous system. It was the touch of indoctrination.

They struggled back a few paces, the Relay gyros spinning like blades.

At the same moment, the echo shard burned against his chest, as demanding as the imprint of indoctrination pouring out of the younger man and into his skin. Rukosh resisted, he had to. He could. He had tortured himself by resisting the pull of the echo shard for so long…

With a heaving grunt, he raised his right arm—straining against the white-hot pain of the snapped muscles and the flayed tendons—just a hand on Jinspar’ arm was all he needed.

Jinspar lunged forward, trying to crush Rukosh to the ground.

Rukosh moved with the momentum, pulling the scientist off balance.

He roared, twisted his body, hurled Jinspar into the Relay…

The indoctrinated scientist’s scream cut off suddenly as he fell into the Relay slipstream, exploding into atoms and flung across the universe.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really happy, then horribly depressed, and fighting with AO3 was making me lose my mind. Then I figured no one would read it, so late as it was to finish. Oh well, gotta finish it anyway.

**Commander Shepard**

Shepard was so tired of the performance: honing his anguish into a look of serene heroism for the benefit of the admirers and well-wishers. When he left the hospital, he told Kaidan he would never perform again, and yet here he was in another opulent hall, accepting handshakes and everything that passed for a handshake on alien worlds. He fell into the routine with alarming ease, like pressing his tongue against a toothache.

Kaidan had stood by him through the whole thing—rushing to his side as soon as he had descended from the stage. He even stepped between Shepard and some of the more zealous attendees, deflecting them with a grace Shepard could not have mustered even _before_ the war.

And still, Shepard couldn’t look him in the eye.

There was a part of Shepard that longed for Kaidan to catch him by the arm, swing him around, stoop his head to catch Shepard’s gaze. The soft brown eyes, searching his for a sign of life. To tell him “I didn’t come for a quick drink.”

But Kaidan was respecting his space, and it tore Shepard apart. He gave a half bow to an asari dignitary and turned his body from the crowd, limping off one leg. Kaidan’s hand was on his back in an instant, leaning in to Shepard’s ear.

“Are you alright?”

Shepard wanted nothing more than to leave, but in the presence of all these people, Kaidan’s hand helping him up a step felt like love. Back in their hotel room, alone, it would feel like obligation and pity. He didn’t want that for Kaidan.

“I need to leave, Kaidan,” he said, instead. Because leaving, being alone with Kaidan, is what he _needed_. Not the punishment of it, but the possibility that this time he could fashion the thoughts he had on stage during the ceremony into words. “Please?”

“Yeah, of course. Say no more.” Kaidan gently pushed the small of his back, then pivoted to deflect the hanar ambassador.

At the transit depot, before Kaidan could hail a cab, Shepard curled his fingers into the front of Kaidan’s tuxedo and pulled them face to face.

“Wait, just wait,” his voice cracked with emotion. Kaidan took his elbows with a start, then took his waist instead. Shepard slumped. “I need… to talk.”

He gave Kaidan a moment to look around for prying eyes, to shepherd him into an alleyway, or to urge him into a cab. But he didn’t, he only stared, soft eyes and parted lips and steady breath.

“I’m here.”

“I lied to you, in the hotel room. I told you I was just fine. I’m not, Kaidan. I’m just…” he choked.

“Shh,” Kaidan’s arms tightened around him, “It’s alright, I’m here. It’s alright.”

“You said you loved me, that you’d believe what I told you. I should have told you.”

Kaidan looked away.

“Yeah, it was pretty obvious you weren’t alright. I… didn’t believe you after all. I mean I tried but… I can see you, you know.” Kaidan’s eyes met his again. “I can see you.”

“No matter how hard I try I can’t find a way to tell you what’s happening in my head,” he squeezed his temples and his fingers came away sweaty. “My mind has been everywhere, I can’t hold onto one thought at all. And sometimes I feel like I’m a monster and sometimes I feel like I’m… a god or something.” The blush rode the outburst up into his cheeks, but he raged on despite the embarrassment. “And I feel like _you_ can’t help me. And sometimes I feel like I don’t _want_ you to help me. And I want to want… and—“

“Woah, easy,” Kaidan put a hand behind his head, pressed Shepard’s face into his chest. “I want to hear it all, but go easy on yourself, you—“

“No,” Shepard pushed back, but didn’t let himself slip from Kaidan’s grasp. “I should have died in that explosion. I _wanted_ to die in that explosion… No that isn’t right. _Now_ I wish I would’ve died in that explosion. I deserved to die.”

“No—what… do you mean?”

“The people I helped destroy, even the Reapers.” How to say what he needed to say to Kaidan? Shepard himself was never sure moment to moment whether what he felt was personal or cosmic. That’s what grief was, that was the guilt of it, he supposed. He sputtered, fighting with the words.

“Shepard,” Kaidan said, and Shepard realized that Kaidan had been saying his first name over and over. He looked up. “I _love_ you. You can tell me what you need to say.”

“The Reapers harvested so many Cycles. More lives than I can imagine. Since… the start of life in the galaxy, that’s been how things work. Species develop, Reapers harvest. Over and over and over.” His knuckles were white, fists still balled up in the front of Kaidan’s coat.

“Until you stopped them,” Kaidan nodded.

“So what now?”

“Hmm?”

Shepard laid his forehead against Kaidan’s, barely able to keep his lip from trembling.

“What does that make me? And don’t say a ‘hero’. It means I changed everything, the whole order of things. But I’m so broken, Kaidan. I don’t belong in the new way of things, I’m part of the old way. Sacrifice and kill and survive.”

“But Shepard—“

“—and if I’m so broken, and everything has changed,” Shepard willed his eyes to close, but they wouldn’t, and there were Kaidan’s boring into him. “Then I can’t blame you for not loving me.”

++

 

**General Rukosh**

Shalteen had taken a team to investigate the strange power fluctuation in the Conduit. Two Juniors stayed with her, along with Yssynik and Rhavka, as Korma and Vlokiv took the tram and the other two junior researchers another kilometer up the tunnel towards the heart of the complex to check the exchanges there. With the flaring Conduit down in the crater site, the whole company was practically bubbling with excitement as they began to scan the complicated circuitry alongside the inusannon stone.

Vigil had been little help in the matter of determining the problem.

He had control over the Conduit when it first fired, what happened? He could still receive readings from the Relay, but the command to shut down would not execute.

What had happened in the mean time? He couldn’t detect any problems in these particular exchanges.

Was he typically able to self-diagnose problems with his power exchangers? Of course, Doctor Ksad had programmed him to be fully autonomous for centuries, except in regards to the Conduit, which limitation had now been overcome. Furthermore, he had Doctor Ksad’s capacity to assess any issues with his matrix…

Yes, yes: Ksad was not so defensive. But had he detected any problems in his system at all? None whatsoever: all other functionality was intact except for the ability to shut down the mini-Relay. The shut-down program had been initiated, but had not worked as intended within the Relay itself.

Software within the Conduit? Or a hardware malfunction? It could be either.

In order for Vigil to have control over the start-up procedures but _not_ the shutdown, it would require significant rerouting to allow the two processes to be isolated. Could he determine a way to safely shutdown the Relay which would not violate his fail-safes? Yes, it would take about ten minutes.

Then, Vigil had reported gunfire in the Conduit chamber, and everything happened very quickly.

Shalteen turned to her team, barking out that they had to cut power to the Conduit by any means necessary at once. She scrambled for a hatch which would allow her to sever a crucial VI interchange.

Yssynik had been the first to frown and question who besides the general could have a weapon—when suddenly one of the two junior drew a pistol from his waist.

He’d nearly blown Shalteen’s hand off.

Rhavka had screamed, dashed over to her.

Yssynik realized what Shalteen had been attempting, and made for the hatch, but in the confusion, the other Junior had leapt in front of him to save the Conduit, bashed Yssynik back with a biotic shove. Rhavka kneeled next to Shalteen, holding a barrier between the two and the rest of the team—the Junior with the gun turned, leveled his gun on Yssynik, but the other jumped on the gun, and the two wrestled on the ground.

Vigil erected a force field blocking the team from the Conduit site.

But further up the corridor, the two Junior researchers with Korma and Vlokiv had attempted a coup of their own, and if Korma had not tackled the Doctor off the tram, they both would have been killed. But the Juniors seemed more interested in taking the tram rather than finishing the job, whisked in a rush back towards the Conduit site.

Yssynik, dazed, had pulled himself to his feet—picked up a piece of pipe and began indiscriminantly bashing the two Juniors rolling around on the ground, fighting. Shalteen had clawed her way up a wall, leaving a smear of blood, used her remnant of a hand to throw the indoctrinated Junior against a wall. The other Junior scrambled for the gun—Rhavka crushed it.

The tram had zipped past, the force field failing as the Juniors aboard bypassed Vigil’s control. They hadn’t spare a second glance at their compatriot, even as Yssynik ran up to him screaming, spitting blood as he rained down blows on the indoctrinated researcher. The others could only watch motionless.

All except Shalteen, calling to Vigil to reroute power to force fields. Fumbling with missing fingers at a console.

At the moment the speeding tram had reached the Conduit site, Shalteen activated a force field—barely meters ahead of it. It slammed into the towering orange barrier in a fiery explosion. And as it burned in the distance, the inusannon halls were silent except for the sound of Yssynik grunting with exertion, the pulpy sound of the bar rendering the dead, indoctrinated Junior unrecognizable.

“And then we heard the Conduit activate,” Shalteen finished, wincing as she looked at what was left of her hand under the bloody cloth. “We feared the worst.”

She described it in the way a soldier might debrief a skirmish, all the remaining members of their team—of their species—gathered together in the flickering light of Vigil’s chamber as Doctor Vlokiv tended to the wounds. It was a familiar inflection for Rukosh to hear, but it was _not_ familiar to hear it coming from Shalteen.

They were in bad shape. All of them. Vlokiv had spent the better part of the two hours since they all reunited desperately trying to save Prakvar’s life. The old researcher had been shattered by Jinspar’s biotics, then shot full of holes besides. Rukosh had a hole in his own shoulder, and Korma a grievous burn across his back. Shalteen’s hand was certainly beyond saving, Rhavka looked healthy but scarred. Yssynik sat a ways off—flecks of the Junior’s blood still on his face, eyes wide like he could not close them, shivering on the floor.

And the Junior officer, the last of four, sat close and bore the stares leveled at him like a frightened puppy.

“I was reckless,” Rukosh whispered.

“You were,” Shalteen nodded, “That is why I was just starting to like you.” She tried to smile, but Rukosh did not return it. “And for the record, I am not saying you were right to be as paranoid as you were—none of us could have known—“

“Why did we not know?” Rukosh stood abruptly and addressed Vigil. “You were programmed with the ability to detect indoctrinated agents!”

“Yes,” Vigil said, infuriatingly placid given the weary voices and frightened shouting that had filled this chamber for the last hour. “But at the time my program was completed, there was no research on how Reaper indoctrination affects the Prothean mind—the unique physiology of Protheans made the anomalous influence impossible to detect.”

“I cannot blame you,” Rukosh sneered, felt the sticky and drying blood drying on his armor. “I could _see_ something different with Jinspar’s aura. I _should_ have insisted he be scanned.”

“We _all_ saw it,” Rhavka said, hushed. “We all could have said something. And when the others’ auras began to change… I just thought it was glad they were becoming so close…”

“We are not _all_ the head of security!” Rukosh spat.

“Was it different when you encountered indoctrinated Protheans before?” Korma said, voice monotone, lying on his stomach as Doctor Vlokiv treated his back.

The last time Rukosh had personally killed an indoctrinated Prothean, there had been too much commotion to even notice auras, to feel intention. So he said nothing.

“It hardly matters,” Vlokiv said, debriding the burned tissue on Korma’s back. “We would have scanned Jinspar and then what? Vigil passively monitors us at all times regardless. If he does not recognize indoctrination, he would not have upon a more deliberate scan. And then we would have locked him away for no reason.”

“Vigil,” Rukosh turned, “Can you detect indoctrination in Protheans now?”

“Yes, General. Based on the data I have collected on the members of this party, I can recognize the frequency which indicates one of our kind affected.”

“And is anyone else in this facility compromised?”

“No, General.”

“Are you sure?” Rhavka asked, glaring down the gangway at the bruised Junior officer, who was now quivering.

“Yes,” the VI replied.

The Junior shrank away when Rukosh stomped up the gangway to him.

“Why were you not affected?” He demanded. “Why your friends and not you?”

The Junior quailed. Real fear. Real sadness—not like the artistic, civilizational woe so many of them had been practicing since they woke, but deep, penetrating sorrow.

So when he opened his mouth to stammer a response, Rukosh held up a hand.

Four of their kind. A third of their species. Hand-picked by Ksad as surely as Rukosh had been. And for the most part, they had been ignored, used as work-horses by the Senior team. This Junior—Gajik, his name was Gajik—had been neglected by all of them. He had watched his only friends try to kill him and sabotage his work. Rukosh could relate.

“Gajik,” he said softer, “I am sorry. I need to understand what happened.”

It took the youth a long time to speak.

“Jinspar would come and play _topyriot_ with the rest of us sometimes,” he stammered, “I’m sorry we broke protocol, G-general. The, uhm, the physio… physio… uhm, no linking. Sir, I just—“

“Did _you_ link with Jinspar?” Rukosh asked quietly.

“Never once, General!”

“Then why are you apologizing for the dead, boy?”

“…because we were supposed to stick together.”

The young scientist’s aura was trembling.

“I know,” Rukosh whispered, and he did know. He put a hand on Gajik’s shoulder, and the boy jolted, just enough of a link to receive some of Rukosh’s famous calm.

“We taught him things,” the young man continued, more easily now. “He didn’t know anything about anything. But he was very good with stories. The four of us were glad to have him around. I, uhm, my parents always wanted me to be a teacher, so… Uhm, anyway. He said that in his studies, an indoctrinated person was unable to survive for more than th-three months, or something. So we believed him!  And we…”

He shrugged, but Rukosh nodded. They had nothing to lose. They were so unimportant, compared to Prakvar, Shalteen, Rhavka—what did they have to lose? And since it _was_ one of the Senior staff assuring them? And since he was the only one to treat them as equals?

“He had fun stories,” Gajik whispered. “And Kibina said that his memories were amazing. He had seen so many things before he came to Ilos. Even though he was not much older than I am.”

“But _you_ never linked with him,” Rukosh stated. He could feel something the Junior wanted to tell him through the link.

“No,” Gajik choked, miserably. “I… was in love with him. I didn’t want him to know. As if it wasn’t obvious.”

He cast his eyes down, and Rukosh sighed.

“I understand,” Rukosh smiled, just enough to pass the lightness through the link.

“It’s not as if I couldn’t have… told him. I mean,” he coughed, “But… it’s not as if we could have had a house and a family and a _jarra_ ranch in the Lakan Anjelic, right?”

“No. Or a quiet apartment on Ilos.”

“So I guess it all worked out…” the words wrenched out of him like a bitter denial. “Of course I’d wait till the aftermath of the apocalypse to have a crush…

“If we, all of us, had met in a different time,” Rukosh said gently, “…we would not be the right people to complete this task. And perhaps Jinspar would never have had his mind corrupted. Or perhaps we all we be dead, and our kind extinct, and the next cycle doomed.” Gajik met his eyes. “I loved Ksad. And for that love, I am alive, and he is dead. I often wish our places were reversed. But the universe has room for good and evil, and love has just as much room for both. Today, you did good.”

Rukosh wished he remembered the way Ksad had put it years ago, surely _that_ would have helped this Gajik more than he could. But he couldn’t remember it… unless it was on the echo shard…

“Alright,” Vlokiv said, beckoning him away from the youngster. “You are next for treatment, let me see that shoulder.”

“Help the others first,” Rukosh dismissed, nodding to Gajik first before gesturing to the other wounded.

“Please,” Vlokiv scoffed, opening his kit to scan the gaping wound Rukosh had become accustomed to ignoring over the last two hours. “You are an old man. I am an old man. You cannot pretend with me. I have triage procedures to follow and _you_ are next. So just shut up, Rukosh. Honestly.”

Rukosh breathed a small laugh, and it was returned in kind by the doctor.

“General Rukosh,” Vigil said. “I detected that Doctor Jinspar attempted to link with you in the Conduit chamber.”

“He did,” Rukosh could still practically feel the finger digging into the hole in his shoulder, even as Doctor Vlokiv began cleansing the wound.

“And yet, you are not indoctrinated. May I ask how?”

He wouldn’t have answered. None of them had a right to know anything about him. He needed the secret.

But with his eyes closed and the pain surging through him and the burn of the echo shard still against his chest, the sound of Ksad’s voice in the machine’s mouth made Rukosh answer before he could even consider denying it.

“I resisted,” he said, softly, fishing the shard from the inside of his armor. “I have had this with me for some time.”

“An echo shard?” Rhavka asked, looking up from where she sat.

“Did it belong to…?” Shalteen began.

“Yes. It was Ksad’s.”

“You have been memory drifting all this time?” Shalteen said, amazed.

“No. I have not.”

“Resisting the signal from the echo shard,” Vigil said, filling in the blanks, “Training your mind to block physio-psychic impulses of all kinds.”

“Burning out your brain, is what you were doing,” Vlokiv mumbled so only he could hear. “Saved your life, but still. Careful.”

“Yes…” Rukosh said, but opened his eyes to stare at the echo shard, coming to a sudden realization.

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

Kaidan was quiet for a long time, and held Shepard.

“How could I still love you, if everything else has changed, huh?” Kaidan whispered. It sounded ridiculous in someone else’s mouth, but Shepard’s mind only screamed that was because he had said it wrong, or that the feeling couldn’t be put into words, or that he was too wrong to even make sense.

“It’s just that—“

“Shh, my turn,” Kaidan placed his hand at the base of Shepard’s neck once again. “I could love you because when everybody else saw me as the stodgy LT with the failing implant, you saw me as a friend. And I could love you because you believed in me and trusted in me. Could love you because you gave me a piece of yourself—confided in me. Or because you fought to prove yourself to me, even when I was wrong.”

And nothing about _that_ was cosmic.

“So you owed it to me.” Shepard’s joke felt flat in throat, because it had to sound like a joke, but tasted like the truth. All debts were forgiven when they were owed to a monster, or when they were made before the countdown clock to apocalypse was stopped.

“More like I owed it to myself,” Kaidan chuckled. A true joke. “No, it’s… like what you said at your speech tonight. You’re a soldier, you saw what was happening, you _had_ to act. But no matter how many times you say that… I know you don’t believe it. And neither do I. You chose to fight the Reapers, and you chose _how_ you were gonna do it. You chose the right thing.” He touched Shepard’s face, “I chose to love you. I choose to love you like this. Exactly how you are, and exactly how you’re gonna be.”

Shepard closed his eyes, overwhelmed, but ready to be overwhelmed from without instead of from within. Shepard fought to believe it, but Kaidan said it again, and the voices in Shepard’s mind couldn’t compete with his voice.

++

 

**General Rukosh**

All of them were patched up, physically, at least. Yssynik had insisted they bury the dead, shouted about it when the others tried to go to sleep until he announced he would do it himself, whereupon the rest followed him back to the cavernous main hall. They pulled the charred corpses from the wreckage by the conduit site, and Yssynik himself buried the man he had beaten to death.

Shalteen did indeed lose her hand. Rukosh’s right arm could only move with spasms of pain. Korma moaned all through the night. Prakvar had days to live, at most—he slipped in and out of consciousness, and they took shifts watching him.

The stench of blood and the psychic stain of grief and shock were still splattered all over Vigil’s chamber when they reconvened in the morning.

“The keepers?” Rhavka exclaimed.

“Yes,” Rukosh continued, “Servants of the Citadel and not the Reapers.”

“Wait,” Shalteen urged, holding up the stump of her hand, “I have never seen a keeper, obviously, but I thought they were the ones who activated the Citadel relay to _allow_ the Reaper invasion!”

“They were,” Prakvar coughed, rasping breaths coming slowly. “I was… was there… they…” he coughed again, and Vlokiv stooped to adjust his oxygen mix, “and then… thousands of Reapers… but…”

“But they were signaled to do so by the Citadel itself,” Rhavka finished for him. “Some vanguard, like we theorized, sent a signal to the Citadel which transmitted it to the keepers. Doctor Ksad had us working on the calculations originally as our first project when we came to Ilos.”

“So what can we do with that information?” Shalteen frowned.

“I do not know,” Rukosh admitted. But he had remembered Ksad mentioning it, had seen it recalled in the echo shard. Ksad was a chess master, he knew about the keepers. It was not unreasonable to assume he had imagined a way they could be used. Rukosh couldn’t, but…

“The, uhm,” Gajik spoke up. “Change the signal so the keepers don’t receive it?”

Korma blinked at him.

“Can we do that?”

All eyes turned to Rhavka and Yssynik. Rhavka looked to Yssynik, but he stared at the floor, still shivering.

“No,” she shrugged, “Yes? I… I don’t know, it depends on so many things!”

“What things?”

“We need to know where the Citadel transmits form, we need to know what kind of signal the Reaper _sends_ , we need to understand how the keepers receive their signals _from_ the Citadel, and we would need to design a composite function which would alter that exchange and that the keepers _won’t recognize_ and reprogram!”

“I have been to the Citadel,” Rukosh said, “As has Prakvar. All signals are relayed to and from the central tower.”

“We know nothing about the keepers,” Vlokiv shook his head.

“…Jinspar did,” Gajik squeaked.

Of course. And that had been the reason he had been given priority. There was a tense moment of silence, the auras of the team shifting from a devastated crimson when they realized a major asset had been killed to a golden shimmer as they realized that this had likely been one of Ksad’s final contingencies.

“We will have to figure out the rest when we get there,” Shalteen concluded, quietly.

“Are you ready for this, Yssynik?” Rhavka asked, uneasily touching his shoulder.

“I am,” he answered at once, though still grimacing at the floor. “It will work. We disrupt the signal. The Citadel Relay never opens. The Reapers never awaken.”

“We s-should…. leave at once….” Prakvar coughed.

“There is no rush,” Korma said, “We have plenty of time to plan…”

“There is nothing we can plan on this end,” Shalteen laughed, then looked to Rhavka, “Is there? No. There is not.”

“Still, surely we must give ourselves some time. To grieve? Or to… what will we do once we get there? No matter how much food we bring, eventually we will starve to death! Or die of thirst…”

“One way trip,” Shalteen nodded. “We were all going to die of something boring, anyway—no offense to the dead—but at least we leave intriguing corpses in interesting places,” she held up her stump of a wrist.

“The transport can only carry so much food and water,” Rhavka urged. “Once that is filled, there is nothing Yssynik or I can do until we reach the Citadel.”

“We can… take time…” Prakvar wheezed, sinking into unconsciousness again. “Pity… would have liked to see my home… one last… time…” he fell into a restless sleep, and the rest fell to silence.

After some discussion, they decided they could have the transport ready by the next morning, after all.

When all the preparations were made, General Rukosh made his way slowly through the cavernous hauls once more, joining the rest in Vigil’s chamber for the final checkup: short, to the point, and nervous.

“Vigil,” Rukosh had remained behind after the rest of the team had exited the chamber for the last time. If any of them had thought it was strange when the general didn’t enter the lift with them, it didn’t show in any of their auras.

“Yes, General?”

“How long will you have power?”

“With the inusannon terraforming engine, I can retain power for millennia.”

“Long enough to greet the younger species?”

“Yes. Even should they take far longer to develop interstellar travel.”

“Long enough to see the Reapers return?”

The machine was silent.

“If this plan succeeds, it will not stop them,” Rukosh continued, “We both know it. They will find another way.”

“They will,” His voice was so like Ksad’s. “And I believe I will have enough power to wait.”

“When the other species find this place. _If_ the other species find this place. What has Ksad instructed you to do?”

“Help them. However I can.”

“Good.”

“I will tell them about you, General Rukosh. About this team.”

“All that matters is what we did,” Rukosh removed the searing echo shard from his armor and held it in his palm. “If all that remains of our people is… Ksad’s dream , his selflessness in helping the next Cycle. That is enough. Not the empire, or the speciesism, or the wars, or the divisions, or the technology we stole. If these things pass away, they will not be missed. Let them think we were all… like Ksad. Let them see our people the way Ksad saw them. Merciful.”

“Very well, General.”

“If you are all that survives of us,” Rukosh stood side by side with the VI now, staring at the lift door that would soon close, then not open again for millennia. Vigil’s view until he was found again—though his sensor array could see the whole facility and monitor deep across the galaxy—was this dark chamber and it’s empty pods, the gangway and stone walls with water seeping in. “Then the next cycle will meet our people and hear his voice.”

“I have analyzed all possibilities of escaping the Citadel,” Vigil replied after a moment. “It is unlikely that enough biomatter remains on the Citadel to be used as a food source, and the tram—“

“Yes. I know. We all understand.”

“…I will not be able to determine if your plan is successful until the next cycle reaches its termination threshold.”

“Fifty thousand years of suspense,” Rukosh smiled. “I do not envy you. We _will_ succeed.”

“I believe you will, General.”

“Believe Ksad. I do.”

“And he believed in you, General.”

“You do have some of his interpersonal memories, then?”

“As he would say, ‘No, I have eyes.’”

Rukosh laughed.

“He had beautiful eyes…” he sighed. “I will be with him again. Soon. But first, to finish his work.”

As he stood to leave, Vigil called out to him.

“General Rukosh,” Rukosh turned, “It has been an honor, sir, to have met the last avatar of the Prothean people.” His voice was reverential in a way Ksad’s had never been, had never needed to be. The only one who Rukosh would ever allow to mention the title he’d received from the Emperor and hated for years. Only Ksad’s voice made it sound genuine. “My namesake. The Avatar of Vigilance.”

Rukosh turned back to the elevator, chuckling his dismissal.

“You were not named for me, machine. We were only given the same one.” All the work the team had done since they’d awoken had buried even the faintest imprints of Ksad’s time from the chamber. It was time to leave. “You wear it better.”

++

 

**Commander Shepard**

The two sat together in silence for a long time, watching the well-dressed dignitaries file off the ceremony grounds. Shepard’s mind was a buzz of static, and the feel of Kaidan next to him was stronger that the ache in his legs where the braces bit into his muscle.

“Come on,” Kaidan whispered, easing him up. “Let’s go home. Your legs are getting stiff, I can tell.”

“We need to go by Col Vedirus’ lab, first,” Shepard grunted, coming to his feet.

“No, we don’t _need_ to do that at all,” Kaidan frowned.

“He said he’s be done processing the data on the codex in my brain by the time we were out.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, you’ve had a hard day, I want to get you back to the hotel and in bed. We can send him a message from the shuttle tomorrow.”

“No, I… want to go see him,” he looked up at Kaidan. After being treated like an eggshell since he left the hospital and venerated like a hero, he’d felt useless. At least he could be _doing_ something, even if it was allowing a salarian Spectre to scan his brain. He struggled with how to put this for Kaidan, when suddenly, his lover nodded.

“Okay.” Kaidan smiled, weary, but loving. “You don’t need to explain. Let’s go.”

++

 

**General Rukosh**

They had crammed themselves into a modified transport, Prakvar on a stretcher, piled atop boxes of rations. With the tram parked outside of the long-abandoned mess-hall, they filled up on rations and fresh water. Rukosh knew that they were staring at the supplies in the tram, unable to imagine what it was like to be hungry after the degree to which they’d glutted themselves. How would they eat so much food?

Rukosh knew that they would all die by starvation, or by one of the weapons he had packed into the valuable storage space in the back. He had been given full authority to lead this troop the rest of the way, and he steeled himself for his team’s low morale…

“We left the kitchen a mess,” Yssynik sighed, tightening his safety harness around himself, checking the straps on Prakvar’s stretcher.

“Doctor,” Rhavka said, voice thick with irony. “Perspective, please?”

“What does it tell the next cycle that we were such slobs?” Yssynik insisted, but there was the hint of a smile on his lips.

Perhaps Rukosh would not need to give any stirring speeches at all.

“It tells them we were rude to janitors,” he said instead, and Yssynik deflated.

Good, he was terrible at stirring speeches.

“Maybe you should let Vigil know, Yssynik,” Korma chuckled, “’A great civilization lived here, once! And they were all disgusting, except Yssynik, a martyr to cleanliness! Who was prevented from cleaning the kitchen before their troop left to save the galaxy!’”

“Alright then!” Yssynik huffed, “I can just jump out right now and happily spend the rest of my life playing _kajor_ with Vigil while you jokesters go on to the Citadel!”

Vlokiv finished checking on Prakvar and hopped into the front seat next to Rukosh, waving them to move even before he could buckle his safety harness.

“You will have to jump from a moving tram, then.” Rukosh gunned the accelerator, and the tram took off rumbling down the deep halls the inusannon had carved into the mountain. As the other scientists laughed at Yssynik’s continued attempts to defend his honor, Rukosh leaned over to Vlokiv: “How is he doing?”

Vlokiv looked back at Prakvar’s still form on the stretcher.

“He will not last long, Rukosh,” he whispered. “The more we move him, the more dangerous. I am surprised he is even still alive.”

“That is good, he is fighting.”

“He’s _living_ ,” Vlokiv said, brows furrowed. “We do not lose a battle with mortality when we die. Nothing romantic about death, either, or trauma. Nothing necessarily preferable about life over death that we should think we are ‘on its side’ for any other reason than that we were conscripted.”

“…alright then.” Rukosh was, on one hand, glad the rest of the team had not heard the doctor’s little private polemic. And yet, how many times since he discovered he was alone without Ksad had he wished for death?

“I am sorry,” Vlokiv starred ahead as they plunged into a tunnel. “Prakvar is a good friend of mine. I want peace for him. I want peace for me, sometimes. But there is work to do.”

“It is almost finished,” Rukosh whispered.

The anxious talking ebbed the closer they got to the Conduit. In such a tight packed space, the emotions of the eight member team were choking the cabin. It was impossible to tell which sudden shock of fear belonged to which Prothean, or which sudden grim calm fell over which.

Then they turned the corner.

There was the Conduit, and in a moment, Vigil activated the gyros.

With a sudden flash that rocked the whole mountain, the tiny relay sent blue light washing all the way down the corridor. Rukosh squinted against the glare and drove on.

“Would it not be ironic,” Shalteen mused, “If we drive into this relay, and just explode?”

The cabin flooded with cold terror.

Rukosh burst out laughing.

“It will not happen,” she added quickly, “But would that not be some kind of joke?”

“Shalteen,” Korma muttered, “You are… a terrible, terrible person.”

“We are the last Protheans ever,” she began chuckling, more from the sound of Rukosh’s deep guttural laughter than anything. “We might as well have a sense of humor!”

“No one would be around to appreciate the joke!” Rhavka cried.

“Vigil would,” Yssynik added with a grin.

“No one around to mourn us, no one around to laugh at us,” Shalteen shrugged. “High risk mission, high stakes certainly. But… low risk for historical misrepresentation.”

“Whether we succeed or fail,” Rukosh said, breathing deeply to tuck the laughter back into his belly. “Will matter a great deal to the next Cycle.”

“…hard to think of them as ‘real’ sometimes,” Yssynik sighed.

It was.

But Ksad had been real, Rukosh could never forget. And as unreal as his existence had seemed since the death of his mate, he was here as well. And he could do something.

“Imagine how we will seem to them,” Vlokiv said quietly.

Yssynik smiled, nodded.

Rukosh stepped on the accelerator, through the final corridor, they flew out into the crater and flattened the fronds that surrounded the relay. The tram received a ping: the Conduit had accepted their mass, and was properly aligned with the Cotoxi relay on the Citadel.

As the bloom of the eezo core became nearly unbearable, the hull of the ship creaked, there was a bright blue flash.

He closed his eyes.

Felt the pit form in his entrails.

The hull creaked again.

Then crumpled in.

They were upside down. The tram was skittering across the ground, rolling over at nearly double their entrance velocity. Shalteen threw herself atop Prakvar to ensure his stretcher stayed down. Rukosh fought with the controls, realized the tram did not full six-axis thrusters, threw his weight into the next roll to bring the tram up on its point to use the lateral thrusters to bring them down properly, cutting the mass effect generators to instantly arrest their motion.

They lurched to a stop.

When they were positive they had reached their destination and had checked for injuries, they opened the hatches. Cold air seeped in while the hot air poured out. But it was the dryness that struck Rukosh more than anything: the humidity that had been the one complaint Ksad had ever allowed himself over their posting on Ilos was robbed from the tram almost instantly, leaving a dry, winter sparkle against Rukosh’s skin.

They were at the very tip of one ward arm, the nebula behind them, and the stars sunk into the infinite night ahead. Silently, the eight Protheans watched the display, shimmering stars slipping beneath the horizon of one ward arm or the other, watching long enough to feel the movement of the station beneath their feet. Each watching a different star and each feeling they were admiring the same pinprick out of a trillion, their auras evaporating into the space, the shiver of open air and the strange way it made their breaths seem loud and distant all at once.

“We’re here,” Prakvar rasped from his stretcher. “Wh—where are we, Rukosh?”

“ _Kavralos_ District,” Rukosh answered gently, kneeling by the stretcher, watching Prakvar’s eyes as he watched the stars.

“I was born here…” Prakvar choked.

“Welcome home,” Vlokiv said, easing himself down to kneel as well and evaluate his patient’s condition.

“Rethok the Huntress rises over that point, in a few hours…” Prakvar wheezed.

Vlokiv looked up at Rukosh, nodded solemnly.

“We will see it,” Rukosh said, nodding after Prakvar outstretched finger. “We should rest anyhow before we begin.”

A hundred meters away, the Cotoxi relay—smaller even than the Ilos side of the Conduit—jittered and went silent. For all intents and purposes, no more than a statue.

And the last Protheans were alone on the Citadel.


	14. Chapter 14

**Commander Shepard**

“Commander Shepard, I’m pleased to see you’ve returned,” Col Vedirus sounded genuinely delighted the very instant Kaidan and Shepard walked back into his laboratory. The lights were low, the glow of the panels and surrounding the Prothean beacon casting the room in a placid blue hue. The salarian held up a finger as he finished inputting something on his control panel.

“Figured we might as well see what kind of progress you’ve made,” Kaidan said, still glowering a little. He was pressed in close to Shepard, one arm around his waist. Shepard stared at the Prothean beacon, and Kaidan squeezed his side when the chill shot through him.

“As is your right,” Col whisked around the console with hand outstretched. Kaidan intercepted the handshake first. “And it is my privilege to show you.”

“Were you able to find out anything about the Codex in my brain?” Shepard asked, receiving his handshake.

“Very much, yes,” Col waved them over and called up a display of brain activity Shepard could not understand. He suspected, more than anything, that it allowed Col to gesture dramatically for the purpose of his presentation. “The Prothean Codex nearly instantaneously rearranged your brain on nearly undetectable level. The same human neurological structures which function to run your normal cognitive processes have been reinforced and double tasked to process psycho-sensory information from Prothean technology. Because of your species’ particular evolutionary development, the process was only successful in grating a minimal capacity.”

“So another species might have better luck?” Kaidan crossed his arms. Shepard could tell he was exhausted. He’d never considered how wearying today had been on his lover, and he felt a wave of guilt wash over him. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not really,” Col shrugged. “Although, batarians _would_ be more compatible. Asari too, but of _course_ the asari, hm?” He made a throaty chuckling noise from his nose.

“So what exactly are you saying?” Shepard smoothed a hand over Kaidan’s back. “You’ve found a way to make a similar modification to others? Gene therapy or…?”

Col took a deep breath, though his smile never wavered.

“No I haven’t. Quite simply, the process is too complex for neural surgery at the level we currently understand it. While your brain supplies the color of the transformations needed, it does not supply a template.”

“This was all a bust, then?” Shepard frowned, felt himself tremble just a touch. If Col noticed, he showed no sign.

“In regards to making the Codex widely available? Yes. For now.”

Kaidan sighed.

“Alright, well. At least… ummm,” he shrugged, defeated. “At least the artifacts aren’t going anywhere.”

Col laughed aloud at that.

“Not as long as I’m here, at least! But there is something else,” he picked up a small amp. “I cannot use your brain as a map to repeat the procedure on another, Commander, but it is a fairly simple matter to enhance the Codex’s effects on _your_ brain.”

“What do you mean?”

“’Codex 2.0,’” he guffawed, waved the amp in the air. “I can use your Cerberus synthetics to make the modifications. At least, allow you to activate the information passed to you through Prothean technology without it overwhelming your system. To give you a more… complete picture of what you are seeing.”

“But my synthetics were damaged—“

“Yes, yes,” Col dismissed the worry with a wave of his hand. “I took all that into consideration.”

Kaidan gave him a wary look. Shepard could see no harm in it. He didn’t trust Col, but he didn’t think the scientist would make a guinea pig out of him.

“I don’t see what use it will be for me,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m retired.”

“I understand, Commander,” Col nodded serenely. He lifted the echo shard Shepard had seen earlier from a nearby drawer, regarding it alongside the amp. “Of course, your skills would be invaluable in helping us understand the Prothean culture, should you get bored of your retirement. I will be ready if you change your mind.”

“My echo shard,” Shepard said, nodding at the Prothean tech in Col’s long fingers. The salarian merely blinked. “You didn’t tell me where you found it.”

After a moment of silence, Col responded.

“It was found on the Citadel.”

“And I would be able to read it, with this upgrade? See the memories I recorded to it?” Perhaps he would see the way he was then, just before the end, and perhaps he could feel that again. Something to rebuild him in the image of what he was before.

“Shepard,” Kaidan stepped in front of him, hands on his shoulders. He whispered, though doubtless Col could hear anyway, “You don’t have to do this, if you’re at all worried. Don’t think you’re worthless, don’t think you don’t still have a place.”

“I know, Kaidan,” Shepard said, still struggling to believe it. “What’s the harm?” He gave his best, cocksure smile. “Just five minutes, then we’ll go.”

Kaidan’s brows furrowed, but he smiled softly, and stepped back. Shepard gave Col an expectant look, at the placid salarian responded slowly:

“You would be able to see what is recorded on this echo shard…”

“Alright,” Shepard straightened his suit jacket, eased the collar. “What do I need to do?”

“Only hold still.” Col glided over, attended closely by Kaidan, and plugged the amp into the port Cerberus had left behind his ear. “So handy, no nanites needed whatsoever…” A moment later, he unplugged the amp and stepped back to his workbench.

“I don’t feel any different.”

“Good,” the salarian laughed. “Then I’ve done my job better than some millennia old piece of Prothean technology.”

He held out the echo shard. Shepard gave Kaidan a little smile, and reached out for it.

He closed his hands around it, and nothing happened.

“Nothing’s happening.”

“You will need to activate it,” Col said gently.

Shepard stared at the shard. Javik had said that centuries of Prothean history and personal memories were on his echo shard. Shepard instead focused on the memories _he_ had made while carrying the shard, reaching for the most recent recordings…

> _There was a beach._
> 
> _No, he was on the Citadel._
> 
> _The stars were burning overhead on a distant world…_
> 
> _…no, on the Wards…_
> 
> _He was bleeding._
> 
> _He was laughing in the surf._

He closed his eyes, stilled his breathing.

“Wait,” he frowned. “This isn’t the echo shard Javik gave me…”

Then the memories poured into his brain.

++

 

**General Rukosh**

Prakvar died before Rethok the Huntress rose over the horizon of the ward point, and without him, the rest didn’t recognize the constellation when it did.

“If we leave him here,” Rukosh said gently to Shalteen as she covered his body in a sheet. “The Keepers will recycle him.”

“We can burn him, at least,” she sighed. “If we can’t bury him in space…”

And so they did, and the smoke of his pyre drifted up and dispersed into the rosy glow of the nebula. As he watched the scientist’s carapace crumble in the flames, Rukosh considered that likely the rest of them would not have such luxuries as a funeral, in the end.

But that was still a little ways ahead, and though the Citadel was deserted, they could take no chances.

The tram was ruined, the acceleration and crash had blown out the motivator, and short of salvaging a new piece, it was as good as scrap. Instead, with the help of a few makeshift straps, they loaded as much food and water onto their backs as each could carry—leaving weeks’ worth still in the ruined tram—and set off. At Rukosh’s insistence, they each took a rifle as well.

It would take all day, under the weight, to hike from the Cotoxi relay at the very point of one ward arm all the way to the Central Ring, and then the better part of a day to hike around the Ring to the Citadel control tower.

The streets were dark, a perpetual night. The flaring lights Rukosh remembered when he used to be stationed here had all been dismantled by the Keepers—probably centuries ago—returning the Citadel to a clean-palette residence for the next species to find it in millennia. There were no cars, no operas, no young people bustling past on the street, only the strange echo-that-didn’t-echo. It was so quiet, Rukosh could hear the Citadel itself, as if they were traversing the surface of a giant, beating heart.

Ksad would have appreciated that. The sort of observation that made him knock his head affectionately into Rukosh’s shoulder—before he came up with a better organ and a more satirical rationale.

They made good speed, despite wincing at the noisiness of their own footsteps for the first two hours of the march.

“It is more enormous than I imagined,” Yssynik whispered when Rukosh stopped them for a packs-off break .

“What was it like, General?” Rhavka said, looking at the other ward arms in wonder. “Back when it was populated.”

Rukosh could only remember the noise, the hassle, he looked instead at Vlokiv.

“It was as loud, all the time,” Vlokiv scoffed. “As loud as our people could be. And it was as colorful and as bright as we can be, as well. The Central Ring is like something from old-world _Jarla’nCha,_ but these districts were frenzied.”

“I heard they would arrest you for spitting on the sidewalk,” Yssynik laughed.

“For less than that,” Rukosh made a show out of eating a ration bar, and two of the others followed his example.

“L-look!” The Junior researcher—Gajik—pointed to a gangway up in the dark, where a huge insectoid lumbered out of a hatch.

“A Keeper,” Shalteen smiled squinting up after it.

“No need to worry,” Vlokiv supplied. “They do not care about us at all, only the station.”

“So once we reprogram the station…” Rhavka watched the keeper, took a swig from her canteen.

“They will not even listen to the Reapers,” Yssynik nodded.

“Oh, by the Emperor!” Vlokiv grimaced, “Without that backstabber around, I suppose it falls to me to figure out how in _Yissh’s_ Shadow we do that? You, boy, bring me that bug.”

“M-me?” Gajik pointed to himself.

“I expect you have a better range than I do,” Vlokiv was digging in his pack for hi scanning equipment.

“Y-yes sir…” Gajik took off sprinting, searching for a place to climb up to the gangway.

“Gajik!” Shalteen called after him, he turned just as Rukosh lit green, biotics tugging the Keeper down and letting it drift carefully to the ground. Gajik blushed.

“I thought… I mean, I did not think…”

Rukosh shrugged.

“Think of it no more, our doctor does not.” He gestured to Vlokiv, whose weak biotics held the confused creature in place as he scanned.

They set out not long after that, this time not so silently as they had been on the first leg of the trip. Stopping occasionally to scan another Keeper or an access panel to the Citadel when one was available, the scientists all weighed in on how the signal to the Keepers could be modified.

So Rukosh walked ahead several paces, alone.

They had never gotten out to the ward arms much, he and Ksad. Ksad preferred the apartments provided by the Empire in the Central Ring—evidence that his work was finally considered worth the Emperor’s time—and Rukosh spent every moment on the Citadel wishing he were gone. But when it was time to buy food or clothes, Ksad always insisted they go buy from the wards instead of the Paragon Shops in the Central Ring, and they always parked and walked for blocks to get to the market Ksad wanted to try.

Nothing remained of the psychic auras of any of the creatures who had lived here. But still, the memories came. Perhaps it was because he had learned to shut out the lingering presence of Ksad in the halls at Ilos, and now he had lost that defensive ability. The echo shard burned against his chest still, a cold burn to match the thin atmosphere and chill of the Citadel.

The long conversations, the many scans, the attempts to locally manipulate a signal to a Keeper, and the search for water (there was none, every tap was dry) delayed them beyond Rukosh’s expectations, and they ended up camping beneath the stars in the middle of the street.

Early the next afternoon, after much of the same, they arrived at a gate to the Central Ring.

“It… is locked?” Korma said, staring at the interface. Sure enough, the mammoth doors that would lead to Central Ring did not budge to their open command. “Seems there has been some sort encryption placed on the door.”

“A forcefield on the other side of this door, too,” Rhavka chimed in, scanning the gate.

“So we try another entrance, then?” Shalteen had tried to help Korma look at the encryption, but with her crippled hand, she couldn’t manipulate the interface very well.

Rukosh shook his head.

“The Keepers have locked this intentionally,” he tried to feel any psychic imprints around him, but the Keepers left almost nothing behind. There was the vague sense of a Keeper scrubbing the blood-like fluid of one of its twins off the wall… could it be as old as the original battle which wrested the station from the Protheans?

“If they are attempting to keep us out from one entrance, they will have done the same to all the others,” Korma nodded.

“Standard protocol, maybe?” Shalteen folded her arms. “Lock down the core until the next species comes along?”

“That does not seem to make much sense,” Yssynik frowned. “There is no one in the galaxy to keep out.”

No, the impression was certainly old, but not that old. There was a sense of dead Keepers everywhere, but no other species.

“General Rukosh,” Korma said, shyly, “I understand you are quite adept with decryptions… perhaps you could help me?”

It took them hours. The Keepers’ encryption was alien in the extreme, and all of Rukosh’s usual tactics for knocking through such algorithms failed. Korma eventually found a way to bypass the security, the forcefield dropped, the doors opened.

And at last, Protheans were again walking through the colonades of the Central Ring, the seat of Prothean power for thousands of years. The younger members of the team marveled at the size and beauty of the architecture.

All Rukosh could concentrate on was the fact that the central irrigation canal was empty. Even if water were turned off elsewhere on the station, this canal was passive collection from the filtration systems…

And yet, after a few hours of walking, there was still no imprint—not even the faintest trace of Keepers anywhere in the Ring.

It was the smell that Rukosh noticed first, and it made his blood run cold.

There was a shimmer of water in the canal up ahead, like a dried up oasis down to its last puddle. The ground on all sides was covered in what appeared to be a black fungus—a mold that grew out of the water and up the walls and balconies of the Central Ring.

Shalteen furrowed her brow, opened her mouth to speak.

But Rukosh was already in motion.

The sucking sound emanating from the black mass halted abruptly.

The General raised his hand, burning with biotic fire.

A ripple went through the black mass.

With a powerful pull, he yanked all members of the team into a tight huddle around him, then stepped out in front.

With a roar, the indistinct fuzziness of the mold-like mat rose into a cloud of what might have been teeth and eyes.

He wrapped his arms around the others, sense memories that had been locked deep pouring out of him and into the minds of his comrades.

A screeching cloud of tiny creatures rose up from the canal, a swarm so large it filled their view.

> _The zha’til, Rukosh showed the team the memories he had of them, and they recognized the swarm before them. The only remnant of the zha civilization, the synthetic technology they had woven into their bodies, now ripped from their bodies and peripherally sentient in its own right._
> 
> _They had devoured whole platoons and whole ships in seconds._
> 
> _They could plow through most alloys with ease._
> 
> _They reproduced at an exponential rate given the proper conditions—thankfully they’d been starved out and driven to thirst by the Keepers._
> 
> _They had been the chief tool of the Reapers conquest of the outlying worlds until their home system had been destroyed by Rukosh._
> 
> _A huge zha’til fleet had guarded the Citadel during the war, this must me the remaining force after centuries of cannibalism…_

“Run!” Rukosh shouted, and after the link, they all knew which door to head for.

Turning into the swarm, Rukosh summoned all his biotic strength and opened the dark channel. The green blast hit the swarm like a boulder thrown in a muddy pool.

The Protheans scrambled through a door capable of keeping out the zha’til as the tiny machines exploded into circuits and viscera as they tried to surge past the dark channel that leapt between them like an arcing bolt of lightning.

Panting, Rukosh threw up his hands coming through the door, put as much into every touch as he ran his hands over the team. He taught them each the dark channel—a Prothean biotic technique developed specially to deal with the zha’til, able to disrupt both circuit and biological pathways, then leap to the nearest living creature. The technique could kill thousands of zha’til in each wave, but the zha’til swarm—even the small one they had encountered here—was made of trillions of the creatures, any single one capable of slaughtering them all in an instant.

The door slammed closed, and the raging sound of the zha’til beating against it deafened them from hearing Rukosh’s next order.

“What?” Korma shouted as the sound died down, the zha’til retreating.

“Lock it! _Lock it!”_

The door opened suddenly, and the cloud poured in.

And so they ran through the utility facility they had ducked into, firing shots over their shoulders into the swarm.

The zha’til chased them around some corners, and chewed through others to cut them off.

All around him, Rukosh could feel the blind panic of the little team of researchers. He collected his calm and cast it around them as if it were a dagger he was stabbing through their hearts.

They threw themselves behind a secure door, and this time Korma coded a security lock.

“Do you have schematics for this section of the Central Ring?” Rukosh shouted again, checking his rifle.

“I… I think so, let me…”

“They know the layout of this Ring better than we do. They know how to get to us. They know why we’re here—or at least that we are here to do their masters harm. They are extremely intelligent. We need to move. Now!”

“We are almost to the Control Tower,” Vlokiv panted, “Can we make a break for it?”

“Here is the schematic,” Korma showed them all the hologram of their location: pinned down in an access hatch between two utility zones.

“They will already be coming through here,” Rukosh pointed to a narrow airshaft. They only had seconds, and he knew it.

“They will be able to get us in the Central Control Tower too, yes?” Rhavka gripped her rifle tight.

“No,” Korma interjected before Rukosh could respond. “There are forcefields… it was rumored to be very secure… I think—“

“You think?”

“—I think I can—“

“You _think_ or you _can?”_

“—I can get the tower secure…” He was already flipping through screens on the Central Tower.

“Packs off, now, drop everything,” Rukosh lit his biotics and let his ration pack clang onto the floor. “On my signal, run. Straight into the swarm. Two by two. Dark channel: again and again until your heart gives out.”

There was a screech deep in the vents, and Rukosh threw open the door they had come through, and they charged into the inky cloud.

For Rukosh, it was as if time stopped—the old battle lust rose up from his toes into his throat, and he was hungry for body-count. The biotic blasts slammed into the creatures before them, and then all around them as they blasted a hole through the swarm.

The electric crackle of the channels arced back and forth across his vision. The concussive blasts that threatened to knock him off his feet, the roar of the zha’til, the hot splatters against his face, the pressing adrenaline of those behind him.

And they burst through the cloud, sprinted for the colonnade, and then for the Central Control Tower.

It was a long way, and none of them slowed for a second, even as exhaustion clawed at Rukosh’s limbs, heart pounding against his chest, lungs burning. His hands were already numb every time he turned around to use the dark channel to erect a temporary wall of death at the front of the zha’til advance.

They made it to the tower elevator. They raced for the top of the tower.

Despite his trembling hands, his shaking legs, and his coughing, Korma managed to activate the tower defenses. By the time they reached the upper chamber, a forcefield surrounded the tower, the zha’til swarming outside.

“They will begin to search for weak points in the forcefield, next,” Rukosh panted as his companions sprawled out on the floor to regain their breath.

“We cannot… cannot… stop them, can we?” Shalteen wheezed with her eyes closed.

“No, we do not have the fire power.”

“Here I thought we would die of starvation,” Yssynik pulled himself to sitting, head between his knees. “But at least we have our choice of being devoured by…. D-demons instead…”

“We made it this far?” Gajik shuddered.

“You all get to work, Korma and I will ensure the defenses are as strong as they can be.”

Rukosh and Korma found ways to reinforce the forcefields surrounding the tower, it was thirsty work after the long sprint, and with no water. That was why it took the researchers more than two hours to call Rukosh back over.

“There is a problem,” Rhavka said gently.

“What?”

“The signal,” Shalteen interrupted, stepping between Rhavka and Rukosh’s interrogating frown. “Doctor Vlokiv thinks he knows how to influence the Keepers—Yssynik and Rhavka agree—but we cannot send the signal from here.”

“It may be the Central Controls for the Citadel,” Yssynik wiped some sweat from his brow, “But controls designed for the resident species, not for the part of the Citadel that controls the Keepers.”

“That would be here,” Gajik pointed to another chamber on the schematic. “We think. We will not know until we check.”

“…we would need to go back outside!” Korma paled.


	15. Chapter 15

**General Rukosh**

Rukosh could feel the shock ripple through the scientists, exhaustion stripping away any control they had over their psychic auras. But, General Rukosh, even while desperate to be afraid—to show his team that he was afraid with them—remained stoic, aura steady as ever.

“The barriers around this room will hold, for now.” His voice rang out in the steely silence that followed, watching the zha’til mass assault the shields outside, it was hard not to imagine the sound of that colossal crash each time they struck down. “We will all rest for now. Not long.”

Enough to get a drink, to calm down. Not enough to become hopeless.

Rukosh stood by the window on an upper level, watching the colors the barrier turned whenever the zha’til found a new angle to assault it: now as a giant creature with brute claws, now as a kaleidoscope of a billion-billion pin pricks, all at once. They were doubtless trying to countermand Korma’s security protocols as well. They were not stupid, and often in his skirmishes with them, he had known them to appear more brutish than they truly were.

The only creature the Reapers dominated that they had not stripped of its intelligence. But, because they were still sapient, they were prone to the panic that accompanied thirst and hunger and desperation. He would exploit that. Ksad’s game of chess had ended, and now Rukosh’s could begin.

“They won’t ever stop, will they?” said a voice behind him. It was Rhavka, keeping a tight control on the edges of her aura.

“No.” He said. He expected her aura to quiver, but it didn’t. To his surprise, she sat down, looked out the window as if she were seeing the sunrise over _Plajurat_ Falls. “They are almost entirely synthetic. They have cannibalized each other, they have almost drained the water the Keepers have left for them. But now that they have an objective… they will not need to rest for years.”

“Truly fearsome,” she whispered, though her heart wasn’t in it. There was a kind of dread acceptance that had washed over her. Maybe over the whole company. Rukosh had fought seven campaigns that way… or thought he had. Ksad had always told him that, no, he would not have won like that. He wasn’t giving himself enough credit.

“But look,” he pointed. The swarm had twisted together, arced off the barrier and knifed back in as one.

“I… don’t see it?”

“The way they pull back, they  are fast—much faster than even our fastest ships, if the swarm is great enough—but they are not retreating back from the shield enough to achieve their maximum acceleration…”

“What does that mean?”

“They will not attack with their full strength. Each strike would kill thousands of zha’til. At maximum speed, it would be tens of thousands.” A self-preservation instinct. He had never seen it in the machine swarm before. Though, he had never seen a swarm so small. “They are the last of their kind. And they know it, too.”

“Oh…” Rhavka squinted. “We can wait them out? Till they reduce their number and then—“

“No. They will adapt. They always do. They will find another way in. Small as the swarm is, it will take them longer. We have a matter of hours.”

“…You have… fought them many times, General?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“…before you met Doctor Ksad?”

Rukosh cast her a sidelong glance.

“No. Rukosh and I were mated long before the Reapers invaded.”

“I am sorry about him, General.”

“I know,” Rukosh said mildly.

“Well,” Rhavka seemed taken aback, “Do you think he would have been proud of us?”

“There is no way to know.”

“B-but you knew him better than anyone.”

“Yes. I did,” the echo shard burned against him. “I am different since I woke from stasis. And you are. He would be different, as well.”

“Oh,” she said. Rukosh felt a sourness in her aura.

“I know only,” Rukosh turned his back from the window, eased himself to sit next to Rhavka, laying his rifle across his lap. “That I would love him, still. And he would love me, if he were here. I know that we would be together, he and I, and all of us. And that he would never give up.”

Rhavka looked at him for a long moment.

“Perhaps I do not see how that is any different than him… simply being proud of us.”

Rukosh laughed.

“’Proud of us’ means he would agree with what we have done. I can only say that he would not leave us, no matter.”

Shalteen nodded, still not convinced. Looked around the chamber: the graceful and alien taper of the walls and the balconies. She cleared her throat.

“The Citadel… it’s more beautiful than I imagined.”

“This chamber would have been off-limits to us.  The Council of Eleven.”

“Were you ever granted access?”

“Never,” he closed his eyes. “Though Ksad had several audiences with the Council. He used to talk about this place.”

“It is incredible.”

“Yes.” Ksad would wink and say that it would be wrong for him to share a psychic memory of such a noble and secretive place to those who had not been invited. He knew such talk prickled his lover, and knew that his wink turned the insult into an invitation: to ask more, to plead sweetly, to make love, to pretend he was not bothered. To be anything other than the taciturn man he was.

“…tell me about him?” She asked gently.

Rukosh thought for a long time.

“No.”

“Alright,” Rhavka nodded her head, tried to crack a smile, “Must be keeping all those military secrets, hm?”

“No.”

It wasn’t that. It wasn’t… anything. He wanted to let the memories of Ksad ebb and flow in his mind and to burn through the echo shard at his breast and he didn’t want to have to explain them to anyone. It was just something for him. Private pain. Private joy. Singular. The resonance of Ksad in his soul.

It anchored him, and he could not afford to loosen his grip on it at all, not while so much depended on him.

“Alright, General,” Rhavka smiled. “I am sure it a long story, regardless.”

The others joined them soon after, but only Rhavka and Shalteen sat staring _out_ at the carnage assaulting them. Rukosh removed a number of ration bars from his suit—to the immediate approval of everyone around—and began passing them out. He was an old grump of a commander, but occasionally he remembered how to boost morale.

“The zha’til are testing my codes to the _utmost_ ,” Korma lamented when they at last began discussing their position again. “It really is a wonder that the Keepers managed to program an algorithm they could not break. I have been borrowing pieces of it to patch holes in my own.”

“How long are we safe?” Vlokiv stared with shrewd eyes, the ration bar just touching his lips.

“Two or three days,” Gajik spoke up when Korma looked at him. “U-unless someone here is a secret genius. Heh. Heh heh.”

“We have control of the whole Citadel, right?” Shalteen frowned. She was trying to unwrap her ration with her mangled hand. “Why are we not doing something with all that control?”

“We have fairly limited control,” Korma sighed. “We can open or close it as we please, some internals functions, and the Relays.”

A hush fell over the crowd. The idea that the Citadel was, itself, a giant Relay to summon the Reapers from dark space sent a shiver down every spine. Rukosh could feel the realization in the air.

“So we have an idea…” Gajik’s eyes nervously tracked back and forth over everyone.

“Destroy the Citadel,” Rukosh completed the idea. Korma nodded solemnly.

“Is that even possible?” Vlokiv scoffed. “With the _Relay_ system?”

“You bet your ass it is,” Shalteen let her unopened ration fall to the deck. Rhavka picked it up and deftly opened it.

“ _Blow up_ the Citadel?” She gawked, handing the ration bar back to Shalteen.

“Well,” said Shalteen after a pause, “That is certainly a death for the ages.” She took a bite.

“How, then?” Vlokiv asked.

“We would need Doctor Shalteen’s help, of course, it was just something Gajik and I were speculating about—“

“—we prime the Relay to fire, we dismantle the mass-calculation, manually input a gargantuan mass—something just inside the limits of what the core is able to accommodate, just barely,” Shalteen spoke with a full mouth, but could not make eye contact with anyone. “Then we activate it. Force it open.”

“That seems a bit anti-climactic, actually,” Korma frowned.

“The mass free corridor created by the Relay is only open as long as the projected mass is within the slipstream, when that mass reaches the other terminus, it closes. Once we pry it open, it will rip the entire Citadel into itself.”

“A Relay transporting _itself?_ ” Yssynik cried.

“No. Well, yes. But the Citadel isn’t _just_ a Relay, is it? The Local Cohesion Factor—“

“The local—“

“Nevermind, erm, the reason single biological entities get blown to pieces without a ship to ride in?”

“…like Jinspar…”

“I suppose, like that piece of shit. Sorry, Gajik, I meant no offense. I’m sure… anyway. Umm, because of the Citadel’s rotation—“

“—what does _rotating_ have to—“

“—will multiply the tidal forces—“

“— _tidal forces!?—“_

 _“_ Nevermind! Nevermind!” Shalteen waved the invisible calculations she was seeing under her eyelids away. “It will rip the station apart, pull it in, then the second the Relay comes undone, the tunnel collapses, this whole place becomes a mess of atoms flung across the universe.”

“You are sure?” Vlokiv asked, brow raised. Shalteen merely gave him a sarcastic glare.

“No Citadel… no Relays. No relays,” Korma swallowed, “No Reapers, right?”

“Civilization does not evolve the way the Reapers intended…” Rhavka whispered.

“And the Reapers cannot invade,” Yssynik finished.

“So… the Prothean Empire will truly be the greatest Empire that has ever been or will ever be,” Gajik’s gaze traced up the impressive columns of the Council chamber.

“A glorious death for the Empire,” Korma sighed. “…I suppose it is more than I could have ever hoped for.”

“No.” The pronouncement tore out of him. “We… should not.”

He had wanted to phrase it as an order—the last Prothean general giving one last weary order to his makeshift team, but that wasn’t the way it could be. In the end, if Ksad had meant for him to be the representative of all the species of this cycle and the hope of every species to come, he had to also be faithful to those who had trusted him to give the commands.

“We have a chance to lock the Reapers in dark space forever,” Yssynik said, shocked.

“He is our commander, remember, Doctor Yssynik?” Vlokiv said softly, the old man had been considering something like what Rukosh had. “We said we would listen to him.”

“No,” Rukosh held up a hand, “We have come this far together. Let me explain, and then we will choose.”

“Yssynik is right,” Rhavka shook her head, “If we destroy the Relay network, the Reapers will not be able to invade, the next Cycle will develop in a way the Reapers do not expect…”

“We do not know that,” Vlokiv interrupted. “We do not know what contingencies the Reapers have planned for.”

Shalteen opened her mouth, doubtless to continue Rhavka and Yssynik’s argument, but a sudden wavering of Rukosh’s aura stunned them all to silence. The edges of his boundaries were crumbling. Walls built so long ago and so strong could not be simply removed to make his plea, it felt like they were being torn down.

“We could destroy the Citadel,” he began, keeping his voice even, looking at each Prothean in turn. “The Reapers may return—“

“—Even if they do,” Korma cried, “The next Cycle will be _free_! Not… evolved along some path the Reapers determined!”

“—yes. That might be.” Rukosh took a deep breath. He spoke softly. “I have fought the Reapers more than most. Many battles. I won a number of them, and enough to be considered a hero of our people. We did not win the war, we could not. This is the Reapers’ galaxy.”

“Then we take it away from them!” Yssynik urged.

“ _We_ cannot. This is not a war any longer. We are slaves. The next Cycle will be born in bondage to the Reapers. We cannot run. We must kill our masters to be free.” There was an uneasy silence over the company, and Rukosh continued. “Our people know nothing about defeat, that is why our Empire lied to us as our forces crumbled on the frontier. We know nothing of slavery either. Only of making slaves. We are proud, and we have been prideful. But I have seen the races we took as tribute races. The ones we called ‘prothean citizens.’”

“Yes,” Rhavka said, carefully, her aura troubled by trying to comprehend where Rukosh was going. “But we… we elevated them too, yes? Offered them technology that saved their lives and connected them to the stars!”

“And what are the Relays, then?” Rukosh asked, gently. He didn’t wait for an answer. “We could destroy the Citadel, and the next cycle could struggle into adolescence in hundreds of millennia instead of tens, as we did. They would make their wars and alliances and genocides. Heedless of what is coming for them, after trillions and trillions have died, denied of the Relays and the technology they bring.”

“But they would _not_ be slaves!” Korma insisted. “They would _not_ evolve according to the Reapers’ design.”

“It is all, already, the Reapers’ design. The next Cycle is subservient to them in either case, it is too late for that. We would only deprive them the greatest benefit we had against them. No. The Reapers may have engineered the Relays to bring the races together more quickly only to harvest them, but our unity is also our greatest strength. They need the Relays. And the choice will be there’s: to join together, or to dominate.”

The words hurt him to say, such that even the insistent burn of the echo shard could not distract him. Rukosh imagined Ksad in the room, a hand on his shoulder, head nodded in solemnity for the direness of Rukosh’s pronouncement.

And yet, as always, the hint of a smile on his lips, the thin silver filigree of pride that stitched his aura to his lover’s whenever Rukosh said aloud what Ksad had seen in his mind—the weight of his battles and losses galvanizing his conviction instead of his despair. Rukosh had dared to be annoyed by that thin smile, once.

But oh, the things he would say to Ksad now, if it would bring him back for only a moment. He would gush and cry and pontificate before these vainglorious scientists. He would shout about the helplessness of serving on the border, the way it stole the love from your heart to murder an indoctrinated friend…

Of course nothing would bring Ksad back. But it was the same with the Citadel, now: nothing would save the next Cycle, they had to save themselves.

“Alright, then,” Shalteen said softly. The others nodded after a moment, none mustering up the confidence to speak.

“Still…” Gajik’s voice quavered, “We… have only a guess as to where the central Citadel function control is located. And we are trapped here by those things.”

“We need enough time to search,” Shalteen closed her eyes. “To retrieve our supplies.”

“General,” Yssynik exchanged a look with Shalteen, then stared down at his palms, “What do you have in mind?”

Rukosh sighed.

“With their current numbers, the zha’til will swarm, en masse, any party fleeing the tower. They know the field, they know we are without food and water. They know it is pure luck which allowed us to escape in the first place.” He looked from scientist to scientist, “A small team lures them to the Ward arms. Then we activate the Citadel Relay.”

Shalteen smiled bitterly.

“Just enough to blast the city to pieces, and take the flies with it.”

Rukosh nodded, but Rhavka leaned forward.

“How will we even know how much to—“

“I can do it,” Shalteen interrupted.

“And who will go? We are all needed—“

“No we aren’t,” Shalteen cut in gently again, “I will go. My part in this little adventure is played.”

“How will we know how to set the Relay—“

“I will set it before I go,” she put her ruined hand on Rhavka’s leg. “It is going to be alright, Rhavka.”

“I will go,” Rukosh said, but Shalteen turned on him with a scalding glare.

“No you will not, General, so shut up.” She held up her hand, “I called it first. Not going to wait around to starve like the rest of you,” she chuckled mirthlessly. “I am sick of this hand, as well. And I consider it a tribute to Doctor Ksad’s memory to keep his mate alive through to our extinction.”

“I will go as well, then,” Rhavka spoke up.

“A-and me,” Korma hurried to add.

“Nonsense,” Shalteen scoffed at Rhavka, then turned to Rukosh. “Do we need many for this diversion? Or will one be enough to draw the flies?”

Rukosh would not look at Rhavka when he answered, though he could feel her eyes on him, her aura pressing against his.

“Only one is needed,” he said at last.

“There,” Shalteen chuckled. “Just me then.”

She was resolved, spoken like a soldier who knows life is forfeit either way. Rukosh was sad it had come to this, even as he was proud. Ksad said he had spoken like that for as long as they’d known each other. His lover had seen it as an opportunity to remind himself how much he loved Rukosh, and it had made the difference. He tried to remember that feeling.

There would be no dissuading Shalteen from it now.

“I will go with you,” Rukosh said, as resolved as she. “I will defend you until you are in position.”

She opened her mouth as if to protest, but could only nod her consent, in the end.

The company parted ways, each member of their team drifting off to be alone. Eventually, though, by twos and threes, they came together and spoke in quiet voices. None approached Rukosh.

Down at the terminal, Shalteen was explaining to Rhavka how to activate the Citadel Relay—every calculation made in advance for her. Rukosh could not hear what they were saying, but the waves of anxiety coming from both of them were palpable in the air. Rhavka watched intently, Shalteen reviewed the process. Rhavka pointed to something and Shalteen shook her head, explained again. Rhavka brushed a hand over her face and counted off the steps on her hand. Again, Shalteen shook her head, explained again. And again. And again.

And suddenly Rhavka broke down, and Shalteen wrapped an arm around her to keep her standing. Rhavka only buried her face in her shoulder. Shalteen spoke softly in her ear. When she explained the firing process again, Rhavka rattled off the instructions to her satisfaction, never taking her eyes off Shalteen.

Rukosh turned away.

Korma would program a weak point in the shields, once the zha’til discovered it, they would swarm. They were too intelligent to fool twice, however. So that moment, Rukosh and Shalteen would need to dash from the tower-base and make for the Ward access. Which bulkheads were too strong for the zha’til to cut through. How long would they be undetected. What certainty did they have that _all_ the zha’til would follow. The intricacies of the plan took an hour to review, but the time seemed to drift past too quickly.

They traced every step of the plan as a large group, up until the moment the Relay was activated and the threat obliterated. Until the moment Shalteen would die. Rukosh could feel the tension on the air, despite the others’ increased ability to mask their psychic imprints. It was a grim rehearsal, and each as thinking about their own death as they watched the blueprint of their colleague.

“You think about him often, yes?”

Shalteen’s voice was clear, but quiet. She and Rukosh stood together in the elevator at the base of the tower. After a solemn goodbye, they had left the rest of the team in the chamber above. He could feel her aura throbbing with a nervous anticipation: any moment, Korma would signal to them that the zha’til had found the weak-point in the tower barrier, and they would have to bolt from the lift.

“Yes, I do.” Rukosh did not need to ask to whom she was referring.

“It must be very painful for you,” she stared straight ahead. “I am sorry.”

“You need not be.”

“Oh, I think I do,” she sighed. “It is a horrible thing to wake up without like that. Without the other half of your heart. I think no one has ever expressed sympathy for you in that.”

He was not used to hearing her like this, solemn, a little bit of Ksad’s poetic lilt in her manner.

“Yes,” Rukosh did her the courtesy of fixing his eyes on the lift door as well.

“I hate this waiting. Claustrophobia. Feels like being back in that damned pod. I cannot believe it bothers me… When I first entered that stasis pod, I never doubted for a moment that I would wake up. I know some people really fear those stasis pods, I never have.” She cradled her injured hand to her chest momentarily, “And with Doctor Ksad’s plan… the whole thing just seemed like an inconvenient interruption in my work.” She looked over at the general for a moment, “And what about you? What were you thinking about climbing in?”

“I was thinking about how much Ishan hated stasis pods.” He gave her a sly sidelong glance and she laughed. Ksad was always getting sick in stasis pods. Rukosh had made him promise he would wait for him before trying to get back to work, to sit with him while the queasiness went away.

“I am glad he had someone worrying about him,” she swallowed. “We all trusted him so completely. Doctor Ksad Ishan: could not make a mistake. The greatest mind in the Empire. He needed someone like you watching out for him. We all do.”

Rukosh merely nodded. He didn’t like to think about Ksad needing him, didn’t like the suggestion of any sort of power imbalance between them. They didn’t just complement one another—folding their strengths into the other’s weaknesses—they were two halves of the same soul.

But of course, that was romantic. _That_ was a little bit of Ksad’s poetry that had wriggled into his own veins, as well. Of course there had been times where Rukosh had been nothing but his battle-wounds and broken spirit, and Ksad had held him together, showed him a mirror of himself in Ksad’s own eyes until he was whole. And, much as it pained him to admit, there were times Ksad had broken down and relied on Rukosh to be his strength… and sometimes his gentleness, too.

While he was lost in thought, Shalteen huffed at something she was thinking.

“An ‘interruption in my research’,” she shook her head. “How naïve. Everyone… everyone I ever had any affinity for was in those pods with me. Everything I had spent my life trying to build was in that compound. Some interruption, eh? The end of civilization, and now here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“And this time, it is no ‘interruption’. Just the end. When _this_ box opens, _our_ plan goes into effect. I am going to die either way.” For the briefest moment, Rukosh could see through her façade, could feel the pain in her hand through her aura. “It is a lonely feeling, having to be the ones who come up with the plan. Being without him.”

There was something in Rukosh that believed that any moment now, he would wake up. The elevator doors would melt away into the hatch of his stasis pod. He would hear Vigil’s voice—his Ishan’s voice—rousing him. Something that believed that he was dreaming away the centuries, and that Ksad was waiting for him, still at his own pod, sweating and clutching his head and looking pale from the shock. His one moment of weakness, and Rukosh would be there. His voice would interrupt this nightmare—the Citadel and the zha’til and the sacrifices—an ‘interruption’ just like Shalteen had lamented.

“It is lonely.” Rukosh felt the words come out of him as if they were someone else’s.

Rukosh felt his aura collapse in on itself, the walls crushing that part of him that still hoped to hear Ksad’s voice again. When it was dead, he breathed deeply, burying the pain of the echo shard cloying at his memories. All that mattered now was the mission. The next Cycle. All those who needed to be defended—as Ksad would have wanted. As Rukosh would have wanted, even if he had never met his gentle lover.

Shalteen’s face scrunched in consternation, and she spoke carefully:

“Doctor Ksad used to say that we should write our reports for the younger generation to come after us. Knowing that they would laugh at our mistakes and marvel at our ignorance and—at best—venerate us with the name of some university or other. But that everything we did had to be for them, in the end, and it all had to be honest. I think, for Doctor Ksad, you—“

“ _General!”_ Gajik’s voice quaked on the comms, _“The zha—zha’til—“_

 _“Go now!”_ Korma burst through the channel.

“Damnation,” Shalteen cursed.

The doors flew open.

Rukosh bolted out, part of his mind dedicated to sensing the presence of Shalteen’s aura behind him.

They had a long way to go.

Overhead, the barriers of the tower blazed blue against the onslaught of the focused swarm. The crash of it rattled down the tower into the deck of the Presidium itself, though high above in the vacuum at the center of the ring, it made no sound. Only the eerie strobe of the million tiny machines clawing through the forcefield.

Korma would leave the hole in the barrier as long as possible before raising the shields to full power. They had moments—if they were lucky—before the zha’til detected them. They ran as if they had only seconds, making for the ward access tunnel.

There was a shrieking crackle from the tower as the barriers crashed. The zha’til had breached the shield.

Behind him, in Shalteen’s aura, he felt her resolve slip. He responded by running faster.

The two dashed into the Ward access tunnel, made for the lift down.

Another lift. More closed elevator doors. Shalteen and Rukosh struggling to catch their breath as the lift crept down its shaft.

“We need… to go back,” Shalteen panted. “The flies…”

“No. We press on.”

“The tower… our plan is… is worthless now! The… flies are not… following us!”

“They will.”

“They will _massacre_ our friends!” she dropped her hands to her needs, pulling air into her lungs.

“The others will be fine,” but he wasn’t sure. “We cannot locate the controls with the zha’til infesting the Central Ring—“

She came up, belted the words in Rukosh’s face. “If they can get into the tower—“

“The zha’til will chase us because only _we_ can give them access to the rest of the Citadel,” he responded, putting a cold wall between himself and the anguished fear in Shalteen’s eyes. He did not tell her that—even in the worst case—once the zha’til had slaughtered the rest of their company, they would chase the two of them. As long as at least _one_ survived to activate the Relay. Shalteen did not back down, but she didn’t speak, either. “They are fiercely intelligent, but are programmed, above all, to kill everything. The machines will ensure that we are dead and the rest of the station is open to them. Once they have established a hunting ground, they will be able to return for the rest.” It was speculation, as much as anything. Trying to imagine ahead of the Reapers’ monsters was a fool’s gamble. In the end, the old General could only pray that his domesticity and his grief and the damn pod had not dulled his edge. He would only need it once more, would only need to be the Empire’s Avatar of Vigilance for one last desperate footrace.

“…I will try them on the comms—“

“No. If our plan is going to work, we will need the time it will take the machines to find us. They must not triangulate our position. Radio silence.”

“Just you and me, then, old timer,” she said at last. Rukosh merely nodded.

Doors opened. They raced into the vista of the Citadel Wards, spread like titanic petals before them: pink and lavender and blue in the wash of light from the widow. As if it were a flower grown in space, rather than built, streets like golden pollen.

This time, it took Rukosh only seconds to break through the Keeper’s encryption and gain access to the Ward collar.

The next lift did not open immediately—still stuck on another floor from another passenger in another century. Rukosh pointed to a Keeper access tunnel. They dove into it.

Down ladders, across gangways, sometimes elbowing past the stoic Keepers—shockingly solid, prickly creatures—sometimes blasting them apart with biotics to maintain speed.

And just as they had reached Ward level, the Keepers all scattered.

There was a whine in the tunnels above them.

“What—“ a shock of terror surged through Shalteen’s aura. “ _Already?_ ”

“Now!” Rukosh cried, pushing her through the hatch.

They were out on the street, footsteps ringing out against the silent buildings, all blank slates and unfinished, ready to be adapted to the form of the next dominant race. Higher ground—in order for the plan to work, they needed to get above the atmospheric level.

The great skyscraper they had designated loomed ahead.

And then the swarm burst through the tunnel behind them.

Millions of tiny machines, scraping all against the others in a growl and a scream, tore through one of the smaller high-rises behind the running Prothean. It tipped and twisted in the gravity shift and came crashing down.

The crash shook Rukosh’s step, and the rubble tumbled around him and tripped him, the smoke cloud outpaced him and surged between him and his goal. And still he ran.

Another howling collision: the zha’til were ripping the street to shreds behind them. They were desperate, Rukosh noticed. Uncoordinated on a level he had never observed. Starving perhaps? Or the Keepers, some sort of signal to inhibit transmission of their joint consciousness? Could it be the machines were enraged?

It was the answer to a prayer, regardless.

The sky above was a luminous purple. His heart pounded in his chest. Eyes fixed on Shalteen ahead of him, running like the devil were on her heels.

Rukosh let his aura spread wide—a thick veil of absolute, steely calm.

It had won him fame among his men: his emotionless, powerful control.

Ksad had called it ‘lovable.’

The swarm pierced the threshold of his aura.

He turned on his heel, body alive with green fire.

The dark channel collided with the head of the swarm. His heart skipped a beat, the feedback wave sending shocks down his arms and legs as the channel leapt between zha’til. Piercing, shredding, annihilating.

The battle rush flooded his blood.

“Sometimes you will need that, my love,” Ksad had said. “But not tonight. Not with me. Never with me, Ishan.”

There was no more Ksad. Not in all the universe.

Dark channel—this time from Shalteen. Death doubled over and spreading like wild fire among the swarm.

They ran. They turned. They flung back the swarm. The glow of their biotics lit up the street as they ran. The swarm of flies split—three tendrils of a screaming beast. Only two Protheans. Only two channels.

And they ran. Rukosh drew his rifle, the green beam sizzling through the wave that threatened to pounce, his other arm extended with weary and trembling fingers to level another dark channel at the second wave.

A machine skipped off the outside of his particle beam, slammed into his hip. Ripping pain, instant cold.

Then another, then another. Clawing at his barrier. Burning in biotic flames at his shoulder, at his feet, in his face. Shocks of pain, piercing through his armor.

They were nearly overrun.

But not one machine touched Doctor Shalteen—none came close before Rukosh had shot it down.

He shouted to Shalteen, they ducked into an alley—just short of their goal. Rukosh’s hunch had been right: the swarm consolidated into the bottle neck instead of using the alley to press in from either side. It was the last dark channel either of them could muster, they were so weak, but as the swarm collided with the biotic shredder, they pressed on and into the skyscraper.

Rukosh’s eyes were blurry, but he sealed the door through muscle memory alone. The walls were thick, an alloy the zha’til would not penetrate—made from the same indestructible materials that formed the outer shell of the station itself.

The only entry would be from the docking bays at the top of the building.

And they were in another lift.

The seconds stretched on as they rose up above the city, above the atmosphere line, into the high shipping lanes. Rukosh could almost imagine the swarm swirling around the building as if rising on thermals, searching for weaknesses. He counted down the time till the zha’til reached the top against his hammering heartbeats. Watched the light on the elevator door number the floors, one by one.

Shalteen was shuddering and exhausted, clutched her comms in a trembling hand. More than anything, she was resolved. Rukosh saw it in her eyes.

“You are to get back to the Central Ring, aren’t you? They need you?” she looked at his injuries, the blood seeping out of his armor.

“Yes.”

“You will see this through?”

“Yes.”

He felt the lurch of the inertial dampeners: the lift coming to a stop.

“’You cannot be selfless with your research if you are not selfless in your life, and with your loved ones.’ Doctor Ksad said that once. Or… something like it,” she proclaimed, meeting Rukosh’s eyes. The lift doors opened, and she stepped out. “You taught him that, I think. Man had an ego but… I think he made Vigil for you. Fitting the next Cycle will hear our history in his voice.”

She was gone.

The doors closed.

The lift rocketed down to ground level. Rukosh was counting. He knew Shalteen was counting.

Out onto the street. The comms:

 _“If we go extinct, how about we take these bastards with us!”_ Shalteen shouted, “ _If anyone is still alive up there,_ do it now!”

Rukosh turned his eyes up, in time to see the zha’til swarm—a wisp of smoke against the purple night, so high up—careen through the upper docking doors.

Then there was a flash.

The ground heaved, the hull groaned. Streaks of white energy. The gravity disappeared—his stomach lurched.

A sizzle.

A crack.

Rubble floating high above his head.

Buildings crushed apart.

Then, from Ward to Ward to Ward, everything between and everything above the 45th floor became a slipstream.

The air roared and the Citadel rocked and tore apart.

And all was silence. The city was in ruins, in every Ward, the skyline had been chewed in half by the colossal massless tunnel. Pulverized to particles: the last of the zha’til, the city the Keepers had sanitized of any trace of the Protheans, and Doctor Shalteen.

A fountain of molecular debris, spewed forth into dark space like the ashes of all the civilizations the Reapers had burned. Rukosh stood, bleeding, in the cold ruin of the empty Citadel.

“This is General Rukosh,” he said into his comms. “Well done.”

 _“Th-thank you, General,”_ Gajik’s voice panted through the channel. _“We… need some time… treat injuries and… bury the dead… and then we are all ready to get back to work.”_

It was nearly done.


	16. Chapter 16

 

_“The Commander is fine, I assure you.”_

_“You told him this would give him control over the echo shard…”_

_“And I am confident it has. However, the human brain takes more time to process the memories.”_

_“It’s not the echo shard Javik gave to him.”_

_“No. It’s been in the archives for thousands of years.”_

_“Whose is it?”_

_“Only the Commander will be able to answer that question. I am glad he’s found it absorbing, though.”_

_“…You never expected to be able to transfer the Codex to anyone else, did you?”_

_“…No. I didn’t.”_

_“Why, then?”_

_“I like to think of it as a gift. My work does not put my in contact with other Spectres, but what I do is no less taxing and disillusioning. I consider it a privilege to connect people to the past. It’s a crowded, lonely universe. The Commander deserves to have that burden eased more than most.”_

_“…he does.”_

_“As do you, Major.”_

_“It’s not the past I wanna be reconnected with.”_

_“Hmm.”_

++

 

**General Rukosh**

General Rukosh Ishan, Avatar of Vigilance, had come to the end of his mission.

It was Gajik, at last, who had reprogrammed the Keeper input signal. When the Reapers signaled the Citadel to open and call the Reapers to invade, it would not respond. He had claimed it was only by building on the work of true geniuses that he had succeeded at all. Rukosh had stayed with him all the while.

And now it was over, and Rukosh was alone. He wandered, limping, clutching his wounds, rifle dragging on the ground, down out of the Central Ring, out into the Wards. Somewhere he could see the stars. There were so few, obscured as they were by the nebula. They were likes sparks on the wind against the purple and orange clouds of Ilos’ perpetual fires.

But the air was cold and dry, and Ksad was not with him. He slumped against a pillar, slid to the ground, arranged his weapon at his side. It would take the Keepers millennia to repair the sheer destruction wrought against the Citadel, the skyline mangled and smoking. He had a beautiful view.

“It is over, Ishan,” he said to the emptiness. “And I am done, too.”

The burn of the echo shard against his chest was the only answer.

“You said this day would come, someday, Ishan.” And he had, told him that there would be a day where his service to the Empire and to the people within it would come to an end. Where his only vigil would be watching the pleasant hours of his life pass by. “But I always imagined you would be here with me.”

But he did sit for hours. And though he bled and hungered and shivered in the cold, they were pleasant hours. He spoke to his Ishan in soft whispers that went unanswered. No matter, he did not need an answer. The echo was enough: Ksad felt the same about him.

Rukosh removed the echo shard from his armor, the fiery flare against his skin disappearing in an instant.

Their whole life together was in the palm of his hands.

Shepard felt the surf of an alien sea against his ankles, a Prothean further out in the water laughing and splashing and beckoning him in.

Rukosh closed his eyes, smiled at the taste of salt still on his tongue when he removed himself from the water. He would indulge himself in a moment. At last, he would indulge himself. Ksad had wanted that for him. The memory of even those words was within the echo shard, too.

The past would have him, and he would go willingly: Ksad was there. But it seemed right that Rukosh should look to the future one last time. In the end, he had been—as Shalteen would have put it—an interruption in the Cycles. He had seen to it that the Reapers would hit a stumbling block in their next harvest, nothing more.

He was content with this. He remembered how Ksad and he would be apart for months at a time while Rukosh patrolled the outer territories, or Ksad was shuffled from secret facility to secret facility. The time apart was always, only, an interruption. Perhaps the next Cycle would end the threat once and for all. Soon, he would close his eyes and believe, the way Ksad had done when he entered his stasis pod—never to wake again.

Ksad had believed in him, and precisely because Rukosh believed in those to come later. It had always been this way: Rukosh soothing a hand down his back while his Ishan sighed and held him tighter, reluctant to leave.

“I will see you soon, Ishan,” he said, again, now, “It is only a matter of breaths that keep us apart.”

And then they met again—the beach beneath the stars—in the echo shard, it was truly an instant, only. Shepard heard laughter on the night wind, his own, and the other Prothean, splashing the surf in his face. And electric touch when his fingers intertwined with Ksad’s.

Then Rukosh breathed again.

“That was the longest,” he said to the bulkheads and the emptiness. “You said I never wavered, but I began to feel as if I would never see you again, that I would not know who you were when I did.”

But, on that beach, they knew each other immediately: through the years and despite the light the work had sucked out of them.

“You died for this, and for them. And for me, didn’t you, Ishan?” A sacrifice to allow for Rukosh to have his moment of freedom, at last. It was his turn to sacrifice himself so others could live… could grow old with their lovers and raise children.

He clutched the echo shard in his hand. The past was waiting: ‘I love you’s’ countless as the Cycles of destruction he had interrupted stored in the small rectangle. Said in every manner and permutation and deed his lover had shared. But, like the Cycles, the memories were not infinite. And Rukosh believed that his interrupted life with Ksad was wide enough to embrace the infinite.

He realized, serenely, as his eyes closed and the past rolled up to meet him like the surf, that he would give anything to hear his Ishan say ‘I love you’ once more in some new way, in his own voice.

His arms were around Ksad, and the laughter filled them both so full they couldn’t even bring their lips together to kiss. But there was no rush, and there wouldn’t be. And Shepard felt a love so like his own flowing through the link between the two Protheans that he felt outside himself, and other.

And a voice called to him softly. His lover’s voice. Kaidan.

He opened his eyes and there he was. Waiting his number of breaths. Shepard kissed him.

“Back already, huh?” Kaidan smiled, wearily. He pulled Shepard in by the hips. “Seems like the amp works, eh? You were pretty deep there for a little bit. I didn’t mean to… wake you up, or whatever. Just didn’t want you losing yourself in there, y’know?”

“No, I’m fine,” Shepard winced when he said it. “I mean it. I mean, I’m not _fine_. But. For right now, I’m okay. With this.” He held up the echo shard, but he also buried his face in Kaidan’s shoulder.

“ _This_ is yours any time.”

Col Vedirus had left, apparently, leaving them alone in the laboratory. But Shepard had all the company he had ever needed in his arms.

His mind was a ruin made of violence and uncertainty and choices too big for any man. Tangled up with cosmic purpose. But he focused on what he knew: he would have—tried to!—sacrifice everything to give the people of this galaxy the chance to live freely and without fear.

Others had made the sacrifice before him. And they had made it for him. He’d done it. But not alone, and Kaidan had been by his side in atrocity and in victory and in defeat.

“Kaidan,” he swallowed, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I love you. You’ve done so much for me, sacrificed so much—“

“Shh,” Kaidan smoothed his hair, “I want you to be alright. But I want _you_. No matter what. Your changes and your ups and downs. I want to know… every part of you. And everything you’ll become.”

Shepard closed his eyes, let the echo shard slip to the ground.

He had thought the same about Kaidan. He had known the way Kaidan felt about him. But it was medicine to hear it in his own voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of my story. 
> 
> I really can't thank you enough for reading it, I am truly grateful: you've come a long way reading through all that, and I hope that it was worth it to you, at the end of it all. This story does mean a lot to me for a number of reasons, but I was deeply depressed while writing it and deeply depressed while trying to post it, and I know that energy can sour the story for others. 
> 
> I hope you found something in it that made you feel a little sweeter, because I care about you and want good things for you. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this thing that is so important to me.


End file.
